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SERMONS 
BY GEORGE R. STUART 




GEORGE R. STUART. 



SERMONS 



BY . 

J* 
GEORGE R,;STUART 



PUBLISHED BY 

PEPPER PUBLISHING COMPANY 

609-611 Lippincott Bldg. 

Philadelphia, Pa. 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies. Received 

FEB 18 1904 

-s Copyright Entry 
CLASS Ct xXc, No, 

n % -T- 14- 

' COPY S 



Copyright, 1904 
PEPPER PUBLISHING COMPANY 






CONTENTS 



PAGE. 

TEMPERANCE g 

THE CHRISTIAN HOME 55 

STRONG WOMANHOOD 83 

love your enemies 121 

the snare of the fowler 150 

the world's bid for a man 172 

Following Christ Afar Off 200 



\ 



A SEKMON ON TEMPEKANCE. 

Kev. Sam Jones and Kev. George Stuart entered 
the tabernacle at eight o'clock, and looked upon one 
of the largest audiences ever assembled in the city 
of Atlanta, Ga. Fully eight thousand people were 
present, filling the seats and standing in the aisles. 
Five thousand of this great audience of people were 
men. 

Mr. Jones stepped forward on the platform and in- 
troduced Eev. George Stuart as follows: 

"Now, brethren, I know we are not exactly com- 
fortable to-night; but if we will all be quiet and 
thoughtful, and I trust, prayerful — for this is a relig- 
ious meeting, we are going to have preaching, sure 
'nough preaching — you will all be able to hear. I 
want you to hear the text and the sermon. Brother 
George Stuart is, as I told you he would be, present, 
and will now preach." 

Kev. George Stuart stepped to the front of the 
platform, with his Bible in his hand, looked out upon 
the audience, and spoke as follows : 

I am very glad, indeed, to look into the faces of so 
9 



10 SEEMONS BY GEO. R. STUAET. 

many whom I have met before. I was in Atlanta 
some time ago with Brother Jones, in our great re- 
vival meeting, and I spoke to you exclusively on re- 
vival topics. To-night I will address you on another 
line. 

I hold in my hand the Word of God, and it is the 
source of the Wisdom of God on all subjects : moral, 
social, business, and political. I. shall take from this 
book to-night the statements of God concerning our 
nation. Two thousand years before the United 
States was discovered, before our nation was born, 
the great God made the statements of my text. Will 
you hear it? I read from the second chapter of 
Habakkuk, verses 12, 15, 16 and 17: "Woe to him 
that buildeth a town with blood, and establisheth a 
city by iniquity! . . . Woe unto him that 
giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to 
him, and makest him drunken also. . . . The 
cup of the Lord's right hand shall be turned unto 
thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory. 
For the violence of Lebanon shall cover thee, and 
the spoil of beasts, which made them afraid, because 
of men's blood, and for the violence of the land, of 
the city, and of all that dwell therein." 

Many people think it wrong to lie because God 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 11 

said: "Thou shalt not lie." A great many people 
think it wrong to steal because God has said: "Thou 
shalt not steal." All Bible truth runs parallel with 
the existence of God. It has always been wrong to 
lie. It has always been wrong to steal. Woe and 
sorrow do not come upon a people who build their 
towns with blood and give their neighbor drink be- 
cause God says, "Woe unto them;" but it is the 
warning of God because the all-wise Being knew 
what would be the legitimate fruit of such doings. 
Woe and sorrow come naturally from the liquor 
traffic, like fruit grows on a tree. Two thousand 
years since God spoke these awful truths it turns out 
that every city in the United States has laid her 
pavements in the blood of her people, and that the 
United States has put her stamp upon her liquor 
bottles, and pressed it to her neighbor's lips. And 
to-day God Almighty's truth is verified upon us, and 
woe and sorrow are upon us. If I should name the 
things that are most hurtful to American peace, hap- 
piness and prosperity, and trace them back to their 
legitimate sources, I would locate them in the liquor 
barrels and beer kegs of America. 

What are the troubles that threaten us to-day? 
Says one, the spirit of anarchy, now £0 prominently 



12 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

mentioned in the press of our nation. Only a short 
time ago, this spirit was so dominant in the city of 
Chicago that three hundred armed policemen were 
called upon to dispel the meetings of anarchists, and 
every time they were found assembled in the upper 
rooms of the saloon. And that spirit is born in the 
saloon. Another great trouble in our country is our 
strikes and mobs, and when they become uncontroll- 
able in any city the first thing the mayor does is to 
order every saloon closed. He goes to the fountain 
from which the mob springs, and the only hope for 
life and safety is to stop the fountain. Again, we 
look to-day in the face of the most heinous and wicked 
corruption in our political life, and every man knows 
that the infernal liquor business is back of all the 
political corruption, corrupting our officials and sub- 
sidizing our American ballot. The significant fact 
of closing the saloons on election day shows how 
dangerous they are, but why tie the mad dog after 
all are bitten ? It is folly to talk of a free ballot and 
a fair count, when the brewers and distillers of the 
United States have throttled the country, and lit- 
erally bought our political leaders. [Applause.] 
[Sam Jones: "I want you reporters to put down that 
cheering."] 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 13 

Again, a wail of woe, sad and pathetic, comes up 
from the poverty-stricken common people of our 
country. Never, since the time when that little ves- 
sel landed on the American shores, has there been 
such poverty and distress among the common people 
of our country. Ninety per cent, of this poverty is 
traceable to the liquor traffic. 

Again, a wail of woe comes up from the widow- 
hood and orphanage of our land. These widows and 
orphans are the legitimate work of the barroom, to 
say nothing of the husbands and fathers murdered 
and ruined by the liquor traffic. Ninety per cent, of 
the divorces of America are traceable to the saloon. 
It is unnecessary to recount the sorrow, woe, pov- 
erty, beggary, misery, distress and bloodshed that 
have been the topics of the temperance speeches for 
the past century. It is needless to answer the ques- 
tions : "Who hath sorrow ? who hath woe ? who hath 
redness of eyes?" Surely we look to-day upon the 
awful fulfilment of the words of God Almighty in 
my text. Woe unto the nation that buildeth her 
towns with blood, and that giveth her neighbor drink. 
The American people have never looked upon such 
a period in her history. Nothing but this monu- 
mental crime and the curse of God Almighty could 



14 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

bring us into suck a condition, amid our fertile fields 
and waving harvests. Think of the wonderful re- 
sources of America; think of her brain and her 
brawn, and then think of her poverty. There seems 
to be no Moses to lead us forth. 

I walk up to Col. Politics, whose blatant voice is 
heard throughout the land, and I ask him what is 
the matter with our country. Without looking up 
to his God or consulting his Bible, he answers : "It is 
the agitation of the silver question that is ruining 
this country." "That," says he, "is the momentous 
question of the age. That settled satisfactorily, pros- 
perity will smile upon us." Let us see if that is the 
question. Do you know how much silver there is in 
the United States ? If I had on this platform every 
slick dime and quarter and half-dollar and dollar in 
the United States, do you know what it would make ? 
A little over six hundred million dollars. How much 
gold coin have we ? If you had every dollar dug up 
out of the banks and taken out of the hands of mo- 
nopolists, and put into a pile, there would be a little 
over six hundred million dollars. Put all the silver 
money in the United States and all the gold money in 
the United States here in one pile, and what would it 
all make ? A little over twelve hundred million dol- 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 15 

lars. Our drink bill for 1895 was more than twelve 
hundred million dollars. We can pick up the whole 
bulk of our gold and silver coin, and chuck it into a 
hole, and still the country moves on, and Col. Politics 
would have us believe that if we shake the financial 
question a little the whole country will go to pieces. 
Yet, I say, we can throw away every dollar of coin 
in the United States every year for liquor, and Col. 
Politics doesn't consider the question worth discuss- 
ing. Do you know why \ Because the brewers and 
distillers of this country, into whose hands this twelve 
hundred million dollars go, have bought our politi- 
cians like hogs are sold in the market, and have 
stopped their mouths and hushed their voices; but 
thank God there are some mouths not yet on the 
market ! [ Applause . ] 

Again, I say, what is the matter with the country, 
Col. Politics ? The answer comes back : "The tariff 
question properly settled will bring prosperity." 
Come with me to the custom-houses of America, and 
write down every import into the United States at its 
ad valorem value, to say nothing of tax, and the 
whole business will not pay our liquor bill for one 
year. "What is the matter with the country, Col. 
Politics? The answer comes back: "Settle the na- 



16 SEEMONS BY GEO. E. STUAET. 

tional bank question properly, and we shall have pros- 
perity." I will go to the city of New Orleans and 
get every national bank in the city; I will go to New 
York and get every national bank; to Boston and get 
every national bank; to Chicago and get every na- 
tional bank; to San Francisco and get every national 
bank; and will take every national bank in the United 
States, not leaving out one, and pile them down in 
one pile, every dollar of national bank stock in the 
United States, and the whole business will not pay 
our liquor bill for one year. All the national banks 
in the United States do not aggregate twelve hundred 
millions of dollars. When a few banks break in New 
York, and a few in Chicago, and a few in New Or- 
leans, the whole country becomes alarmed; yet we 
can throw our arms around every national bank in 
the United States, and chuck them into the whisky 
hole, and still the country lives. How can we live ? 
Nothing but the almost infinite resources of America 
could have kept us from starvation during the past. 
But at last drink has blocked up the channels through 
which our resources flow, and our wheat and flour rot 
in the warehouses for want of a market, and the wo- 
men crying for bread. [Applause.] I make no apol- 
ogy for dealing in the economics of this question to- 



A SERMON" ON TEMPERANCE. 17 

night. When my Saviour, touched by the needs of 
the people, wrought miracles to alleviate the pain and 
the suffering, and multiplied the loaves and fishes 
to feed the hungry, I make no apology for discussing 
the bread question. I believe in a practical Chris- 
tianity that carries a Bible in one hand and a bread- 
basket in the other. 

What is pure and undefiled religion ? "Pure relig- 
ion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, 
to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, 
and to keep himself unspotted from the world." The 
way to visit the widow and the orphan is to come 
in time to help. Suppose as I pass down the street 
to-night, Brother Jones walking by my side, a man 
should rush up and draw a keen-bladed knife and 
stab me three or four times. After seeing me fall 
on the street, Brother Jones runs up and says to 
me: "Here, George, you can bleed on my silk hand- 
kerchief. Is there anything I can do for you? I 
will stay with you to-night and give you anything I 
have." I would reply : "Nothing now, nothing now. 
You came too late. When the blade of that knife 
glistened above me you ought to have caught the arm 
and stopped the knife." The infernal liquor traffic 
has its, knife, crimsoned with the blood of millions, 
2 



18 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

lifted above the homes of this country, and almost 
every hour of the day it comes down with fearful ex- 
ecution, and we follow up and help the widow and or- 
phan in their affliction. The sensible thing to do is 
to grab the arm and stop the knife. Down with the 
infernal liquor traffic and its bloody daggers, which 
butcher the homes of our land. [Applause.] We 
have had theory long enough; the preachers and 
Churches of our land have gone down on record in 
their resolutions as opposed to the liquor traffic. God 
help us to get off the record now and go to work. 
[Applause.] The world is tired of a theoretical re- 
ligion. It is ripe for a practical religion. 

Dr. John B. McFerrin, that grand character, 
reared in the mountains of Tennessee, with a char- 
acter as lofty and steadfast as the mountains among 
which he was reared, was Gen. Bragg's chaplain upon 
the battlefields of Chattanooga. On a chilly day in 
November he was walking over the battlefield with 
his Bible in his hand, reading to the dying soldiers as 
they lay bleeding upon the field. He walked up to a 
wounded soldier and said: "Let me read to you.' 7 
The soldier replied: "O chaplain, I am so thirsty! I 
am so thirsty !" If you were ever wounded, you will 
know what it meant. This practical old Christian 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 19 

man dropped his Bible by the side of the wounded 
man, ran off to the nearest water, carried it in his 
hat, and, lifting up the head of the bleeding soldier, 
pressed the water to his lips. After he had drunk, 
the chaplain said: "Now, brother, let me read to 
you." The soldier said: "0 chaplain, I am so cold!" 
The chaplain doffed his light overcoat and put it 
about the wounded man, tucked it under as tenderly 
as a mother would tuck the bedel othing about her 
sleeping babe, and the wounded soldier, with tearful 
eyes, looked up into the face of the chaplain and said : 
"Now, chaplain, if there is anything in that book 
that tells what makes a Rebel chaplain treat a Yankee 
soldier this way, read it to me." The world wants 
practical illustrations of our Christianity, and we will 
never reveal Christ to this old world until we mix our 
preaching and our prayers with bread and meat and 
clothing for the poor. And it is my object to-night 
to brighten the homes of the poor by turning this 
twelve hundred millions of dollars, burned up in 
liquor, into the homes of the poor drunkards' families 
that it may carry the necessities and comforts of life 
to them. But, says a man, money is money, and 
business is business, and when you spend money for 
liquor you are conducting a great business of our 



20 SERMONS BY GEO. E. STUAET. 

country, carrying on an important traffic, and the 
money is not burned up. 

Now, I am going to show you that it is burned up. 
Keep up with me. I do not ask that you have a first- 
class mind to see it. I can show it to a fellow with 
half sense. [Laughter.] I will show you where the 
whisky money goes. Do you know how much it costs 
to make a gallon of liquor ? Some of you ought to, 
you have drunk enough of it. [Applause.] You cer- 
tainly know what it costs to get it. It costs about 
twenty cents a gallon to manufacture it. They used 
to sell it in my State for twenty-five cents a gallon. 
Do you know what it sells for over the saloon coun- 
ter at ten cents a drink ? It sells for about four dol- 
lars a gallon, not taking into account the licorice and 
tobacco and other devilment put in it. Now let us 
see where this four dollars comes from, and where it 
goes. If you would see where it comes from, stand 
at the door of a saloon and watch the men come and 
go. They are the laboring men, the mechanics, the 
wage-earners, whose families need every cent of their 
wages. 

E"ow let us see where it goes. Twenty cents of the 
$4 goes for apples and corn and rye and other ma- 
terials out of which the stuff is made, and to pay the 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 21 

few men used in the manufacture of the stuff. This 
goes back into the legitimate channels of trade. 
Five cents in the dollar, then, you see, goes back into 
legitimate trade. Where does the rest of it go? 
One large bulk of it goes to the United States Gov- 
ernment to pay the great army of officers to look 
after this business and pay the other expenses of 
running this murderous and expensive traffic. I be- 
lieve the United States Government ought to be sup- 
ported from the luxuries of the rich and not by the 
bread and meat and clothing of the families of the 
poor. [Applause.] Another bulk of it goes into 
our big city corporations to pay extra policemen to 
take care of drunks and brawls and fights and to 
quell the mobs created by this traffic, and to lay the 
streets in front of the palaces of the rich. The poor 
rascal out there who cannot build a front gate to the 
cottage of his home is planking down his money 
upon the counter of the saloon to pave the streets of 
the great cities. [Applause.] Another bulk of it 
goes into the hands of the brewers and distillers of 
this country to make up the millions of dollars which 
are used by the great liquor organizations of this 
country to buy our politicians and lawmaking bodies, 
to subsidize the American ballot, and to dig down 



22 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

the very pillars of American liberty. The meat and 
bread and comforts of the poor drunkard's cottage 
turned into the corrupting fund of our country. 
[Great applause.] Another bulk of it goes into the 
hands of the thousands of diamond-studded gamblers, 
who, with velvet hands and elegantly clothed bodies, 
have their rooms in the saloon buildings of this 
country, who do not work, but gather up the money 
of the saloon crowd and buy their clothes, their dia- 
monds and their fine horses, with the bread and meat 
of the poor. [Applause.] ISTo wonder the middle 
classes of this country are in such a distressed con- 
dition to-day. Take a family of four boys; let three 
of them be hard-working boys, and one an idler and 
a gambler; and if the gambler comes in touch with 
the money of the other three, he will wreck the whole 
family. The poor, hard-working fellows who fre- 
quent the saloons, are supporting these idle gamblers. 
You see this money is going out of the hands of the 
common people; they are the material out of which 
the prosperity of this country is built. The world is 
like a pie. The upper crust is brittle and unreliable, 
and the under crust is soft and smutty, but the goody 
is in the middle. [Applause and laughter.] I be- 
lieve in the middle classes of our country, and it is 
from this class that the saloon is drawing its money. 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 23 

I hold in my hand a silver dollar. That you may 
see clearly what I mean, I will spend this money be- 
fore your eyes. I drop it on this table and call it a 
saloon counter. That dollar buys a quart of liquor. 
Now I will take the saloon end of that dollar, and 
then I will take the home end of it, and see what be- 
comes of the dollar. I will say my name is John, I 
am a poor drunkard, with a wife and six children. 
Thank God it is a lie ! I am only illustrating. [Ap- 
plause and laughter.] It is my dollar lying on the 
counter. I get the quart of liquor, and the saloon 
gets the dollar. JSTow come with me down the saloon 
side, and we will see where that dollar goes. As I 
have shown you, five cents of it goes back into legiti- 
mate trade; and the ninety-five cents remaining is 
distributed to the United States Government and to 
the big city corporations and big brewers and dis- 
tillers and the diamond-studded gamblers of this 
country, and nearly all of it, as you see, is drawn out 
of the hands of the common people, and does not 
come back. So far as the masses of the people are 
concerned, that money is gone. E"ow let us take the 
home end of it. I drink the quart of liquor and start 
home to the drunkard's cottage. My wife, Sallie, 
meets me at the door, surrounded by her hungry, 



24 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STTJAET. 

wretched children, and says : "John, what did you 
bring home?" "I brought you a quart." Now if 
the ladies in the audience will pardon me, I wish to 
ask what the quart of liquor in the poor drunkard's 
stomach is worth. [Great applause.] I say that the 
dollar is burned up at the home end; not only is the 
liquor worth nothing to the poor old drunkard's 
home, but it burns up his body, burns up his mind, 
burns up his soul, destroys the happiness of his wife 
and children, ruins his business or trade, disqualifies 
him for making another dollar, hurts the community, 
hurts everything. Do you see where the saloon dol- 
lar goes? [Applause.] I will spend this dollar 
again. 

I now drop it on the counter of a legitimate busi- 
ness, say the shoe store. I buy a pair of shoes, and 
the shoe merchant gets my dollar and I get the shoes. 
Let us take the shoe end and the home end of this 
dollar, and see where it goes. The dollar is dropped 
on the merchant's counter. A little of it goes to the 
home merchant, a little of it goes to the wholesale 
merchant, a little of it goes to the man who made the 
shoes, a little of it goes to the man who blacked the 
leather, a little of it goes to the man who tanned the 
leather, a little of it goes to the man who skinned 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 25 

the calf, and a little goes to the man who raised the 
calf; and from the store counter to the calf -lot, that 
dollar distributes itself in blessings to the poor. Like 
one of onr mountain streams, it gladdens and blesses 
wherever it touches. [Prolonged applause.] Now 
let us take the home end of it. Kemember I am still 
John, the drunkard, with six children and Sallie at 
home. What is the pair of shoes worth in the 
drunkard's hands ? They are worth one dollar. 
Why? Because my boy John can put these shoes 
on his feet, and with them earn another dollar to pay 
for another pair of shoes. That dollar, like a 
silver thread in the shuttle of business, is woven into 
the industry of our country and helps to make our 
prosperity. That dollar never dies. [Great ap- 
plause.] But let us come home with that pair of 
shoes; it adds to the comfort, it adds to the health, 
and it adds to the happiness of the little cottage home. 
Now let me spend this dollar again. 

I am still John, the drunkard. I will spend one- 
third of it for meat, one-third of it for flour, and one- 
third of it for calico. Now let us suppose when I do 
that the millions of drunkards in the United States 
join me, and we together spend the twelve hundred 
million dollars which is now spent for liquor. How 



26 SEEMONS BY GEO. E. STUAET. 

much would that be in each of these articles ? Four 
hundred millions of dollars for meat would buy every 
steer in the United States at a good price, four hun- 
dred million dollars for flour would buy all the flour 
produced in the United States at a good price, four 
hundred million dollars for calico would buy every 
bale of cotton in the United States at $50 a bale. 
Suppose we look at the practical results of this busi- 
ness for a moment. Come, all ye American drunk- 
ards, come with me to the meat market. Let us di- 
vide up ourselves in the city of Atlanta so there will 
be no more than two or three hundred of us at each 
beef market this evening. Let us march up to the 
market and call for meat. "I want a steak;" "I 
want a steak;" "I want a steak;" "I want a steak." 
The beef man, as he hurriedly cuts the last piece of 
meat in the house, looks up at the pressing crowd, 
and says: "What is the matter, all my meat is gone 
and a hundred men wait ?" [Laughter and applause.] 
He runs to the telephone and calls to the stock-yards, 
and while he is ringing every beef market in the city 
is ringing for the stock-yard. Each one calls out to 
the stockman, "Send more beeves;" "Send more 
beeves;" "Send more beeves;" "Send more beeves." 
The stockman excitedly shouts : "What is the mat- 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 27 

ter?" The reply comes back: "Nothing, only the 
liquor money is going for meat." [Great applause.] 
In every city in the United States the same thing has 
happened, we will say. The stock-yards send out 
their men through the country on horseback, in a 
gallop, to buy beeves to meet the demands. Every 
few miles a stockman meets another and says : "Hello, 
where are you going?" "Buying cattle;" "Buying 
cattle;" "Buying cattle;" "Buying cattle." And this 
chorus rings through the country. The old farmer 
catches the chorus, and smiles as he sees his cattle 
reaching a price at which he can afford to raise them. 
From the beef market we all go to the grocery store 
and order flour. "Send up a sack of flour;" "Send up 
a sack of flour;" "Send up a sack of flour;" "Send up 
a sack of flour." And as the groceryman throws down 
his last sack of flour and sees the fifty men waiting 
for a sack of flour, he says : "What is the matter ?" 
Every groceryman in the city telephones to the mills: 
"Send up a wagon-load of flour;" "Send up a wagon- 
load of flour;" "Send up a wagon-load of flour;" 
"Send up a wagon-load of flour." The mills cry 
back: "What is the matter?" And the answer 
comes: "The liquor money is going for flour." 
[Applause.] The wheat-buyers are sent out through 



28 SERMONS BY GEO. E. STUART. 

the country, singing in the chorus, "Bringing in the 
sheaves/ 7 while the sickle of the busy farmer plays 
the accompaniment, and the farmers of the country 
are the smiling auditors as they realize that they are 
to have a good price and a ready sale for their wheat. 
[Applause.] 

Next we all go down to the dry goods store and 
begin to order calico: "Give me calico;" "Give me 
calico;" "Give me calico;" "Give me calico." And 
as the merchant .cuts off the last piece of calico, and 
looks at the store full of men waiting, he rushes to 
the telegraph office and wires the wholesale house to 
send him more calico. The wholesale man comes into 
his office ; and there is a stack of telegrams from 
every section of the United States, and he begins to 
read the telegrams. And they read: "Send calico;" 
"Send calico;" "Send calico;" "Send calico." He 
wires to the cotton markets of the South, and, as his 
message goes through, all the wholesale buyers send 
messages through the South to "Buy cotton;" "Buy 
cotton;" "Buy cotton;" "Buy cotton." And all the 
cotton of the South finds a ready market at a good 
price. An advance in cotton means an advance in 
hogs and mules and wages, and this means prosperity 
to the middle classes. As the price of meat, flour, 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 29 

and cotton advances prosperity conies to the country. 
To turn the pro rata of this twelve hundred million 
dollars into manufactures and into all of our indus- 
tries, as it would naturally go, every idle wheel would 
buzz, and every idle man would have a job. The 
saloon takes only a man, and the dry goods store 
takes five; the saloon takes one man, and the sawmill 
takes ten; the saloon takes one man, and the cotton 
mill takes a hundred. Stop the saloons and turn the 
money into legitimate business, and there would not 
be men enough in the United States to run the shops 
and stores and factories. The cry would be, "Give 
us men;" and not the everlasting cry, "Give us a 
job." [Applause.] 

But let us take the home end of this twelve hun- 
dred million dollars spent for meat and flour and 
calico. I got my part of it, and I am poor John, the 
drunkard. Home I go. Wife meets me at the door, 
and says: "John, what have you brought?" I reply : 
"Sallie, you have been as good a wife to me as any 
man ever had. We have as good, sweet children as 
ever blessed a home. I have turned all your com- 
forts into the saloon for the past ten years, but I have 
quit. We are going to have meat at our house. We 
are going to have biscuits. Sallie, take this calico 



30 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

and make little John and Jim two or three changes 
of calico waists. Make little Mary and Annie some 
new calico dresses. My home shall be fed and clothed 
these incoming years, and you and the children shall 
be happy." With tears and smiles she embraces me, 
and the little children crawl about my lap and put 
their little arms about my neck, and the poor drunk- 
ard's home, once so starved and wretched and deso- 
late, is now bright and happy. [Great applause.] 
Don't tell me that we are suffering from overproduc- 
tion, when the orphan millions of our United States 
call for bread and meat and clothes and shoes. We 
are not suffering from over-production, but we are 
suffering from under-consumption. [Great applause 
and cries of "That's so."] 

The drunkards' wives and children of this country 
need the necessities and comforts which are burned 
up in the saloon every year. Their comforts lie on 
the counters of the stores and the groceries; their 
bread lies rotting in the great warehouses of this 
country, while the twelve hundred millions that ought 
to command these comforts pour down into the saloon 
hole and the drunkards' families cry for bread. [Ap- 
plause.] 

Going through one of our Southern cities, I saw 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 31 

tacked against many a little cottage and shop a little 
board on which was written : "For Rent." On every 
street I went I read the words: "For Rent," "For 
Rent." I said to myself: "Our people have all gone 
North." Going up the streets of New York, I read 
the little words: "To Let," "To Let." I said: "They 
have gone to the Northwest." I went down the 
streets of Chicago, and I read the words : "To Let," 
"To Let." I said : "They have gone to the South- 
west." Going up and down the streets of Galveston, 
Tex., I read the words: "For Rent," "For Rent." I 
said : "Where are the folks ? Gone to heaven, I 
guess." [Laughter.] I take a pick and begin to dig 
under those little words, "For Rent," and here is 
what I find: [He raps two or three times on the 
table with his knuckles, imitating some one knocking 
at the door.] The wife within says: "Husband, 
some one is knocking at the door." The husband, at 
the door: "Why, Mary, my child, where did you 
come from ? And here is little John and little Bess. 
God bless you. How tired you look. Where did you 
come from ?" The woman bursts into tears, and says : 
"Papa, please sir, don't scold me. John drank, 
drank, drank; he did not attend to the store. He be- 
came involved in his business, and they closed him 



32 SEEMONS BY GEO. E. STUAET. 

out. Out of employment, and drunk in the streets, 
he was arrested. I sewed for our rent as long as I 
was. able. But they came and took my furniture for 
the rent, and turned us out into the street, and I 
didn't know anywhere to go, and I had to come home. 
Please, papa, don't scold me." Putting his arm 
around his suffering child, he said: "God bless you, 
my darling, papa will not scold you. Come in with 
the little ones. Take the room you used to occupy, 
with the little ones, and eat at papa's table." And 
there is a little store for rent and a little cottage for 
rent. Can you see it? [Applause.] Five months 
have passed, and late in the evening another rap is 
heard at the door. "Mary," says papa, "I hear some 
one knocking at the door." The father goes. "Why, 
Annie, my precious child, where did you come from ?" 
"Papa, please sir, don't scold me. Bob drank and 
drank until he lost his job on the railroad, and I 
don't know where he is. I tried to work and pay the 
rent, and to buy bread for my little ones. I stood it 
as long as I could; but we were turned out of the 
home, and I had to come home." "God bless you, 
my child ! Papa will not scold. Take the room oppo- 
site your sister's. Papa will do the best he can for 
you." And there is another cottage for rent. Drunk- 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 33 

ards, drunkards, drunkards. Homes for rent, shops 
for rent, stores for rent. [Applause.] Come into 
our cities and look for our drunkards' families, liter- 
ally packed down in these tenement flats — a whole 
family in one room, and living in squalor and poverty. 
Little women working their very fingers off running 
their sewing machines, until every bone in their en- 
tire body aches, while their drunkard husbands pour 
their money over the saloon counter. Take those 
women and children and put them into happy little 
cottages and turn the wages of their husbands from 
the saloon to the markets and the stores, and there 
would not be a house for rent in the United States. 
[Applause.] 

While Sam Jones and I were preaching in Hous- 
ton, Tex., a few months ago, I made this statement in 
reference to rents. The pastor of a Methodist Church 
said : "0 George, your speech about rents called to 
the minds and hearts of these people that we have 
just had it sadly illustrated. The daughter of one of 
our preachers married a good man, who, after his 
marriage, began to drink. He lost his business, and 
walked the streets of this city a drunkard. His wife 
was a member of my Church. I often visited her. I 
saw the blue veins on her face and her tearful eyes 
3 



34 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STTTART. 

as she said: '0 brother, the rent-paying haunts me 
like a nightmare. I have to sew till nearly midnight 
to make the rent and pay for the little that my half- 
starved children eat. My husband came in and found 
me sewing at nearly midnight the other night, and 
he said if he caught me sewing again that late he 
would kill me. But, brother, I am obliged to 
sew.' " The preacher told me that he had seen the 
little woman at one of the preliminary meetings at 
the tabernacle. And the last song they sang at the 
tabernacle was: "We'll never say good-bye in 
heaven." That very night, possibly making up the 
hour she had lost at the service, she was found by her 
husband stitching away at midnight, thinking of rent ! 
Kent ! ! KENT ! ! ! Staggering into the room, wild 
with drink, he said : "I told you I would kill you." 
Bang ! Bang ! ! Bang ! ! ! Three balls tore their way 
through her quivering flesh. As her little children 
came screaming around her, she sent her little boy 
for the preacher. "And," said the preacher to me, 
"as I stooped over her dying body, she whispered, as 
her life-blood ebbed away: ' We'll never say good-bye 
in heaven, and, thank God ! there will be no rent to 
pay up there.' " This is but one of almost daily oc- 
currences throughout the land. Shall we men, who 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 35 

hold the ballot of our country and the destinies of 
these poor women in onr hands, suffer such cruelties 
year after year ? God Almighty help us come to the 
rescue of our suffering women! [Prolonged ap- 
plause.] 

Let me borrow an illustration. I have heard so 
much and read so much along this line that I hardly 
know what is original. The truth is, I don't care 
much about originality, anyhow. There is so little of 
it in the country. [Laughter.] If the bishop should 
be standing at my front gate with his gold-headed 
walking-stick, and a mad dog was to run up, I would 
jerk that cane out of his hand and break it into pieces 
over the mad dog; and if he should say, "George, you 
have used my cane," I should say, "Thank God, I 
have killed the mad dog." In fighting this mad dog 
of hell, whose poisonous fangs are piercing our homes, 
I don't ask where I have gotten the stick; I pick up 
anything I come across that will do the work. But 
let me give you this illustration: Here are four 
American machines. Look at them. The first is a 
sawmill, the second a grist mill, the third a paper mill, 
the fourth a gin mill. Let me ask them some ques- 
tions. "Hello, sawmill, what is your power?" 
"Steam or water." "Turn it on and let the wheels 



36 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

buzz. What is jour material?" "Logs." "What 
is jour manufactured article?" "Lumber." "Lum- 
ber worth more than logs ?" "Yes, sir." "Then jou 
take the raw material and manufacture it into an arti- 
cle worth more than the raw material?" "Yes." 
"Then jou create values ?" "Yes." "You are a good 
machine. We will put our arms around jou, and 
preserve jou as an American industry with honor." 
"Hello, little machine, what are jou ?" "I am a grist 
mill." "What is jour power ?" "Steam or water." 
"Turn on the power. Let us hear the music of the 
wheels, the creak, and the creaking old mill, Maggie. 
What is jour raw material?" "Wheat and corn." 
"What is jour manufactured article?" "Flour and 
meal." "Flour and meal worth more than wheat 
and corn ?" "Yes." "Then jour manufactured ar- 
ticle is worth more than the raw material ?" "Yes." 
"Then jou create values, and we will put our Ameri- 
can arms around jou and protect jou as an American 
industrj of honor." "Hello, little machine, what 
are jou?" "I am a paper mill." "What is jour 
power?" "Steam or water." "What is jour raw 
material?" "Old rags." "What is jour manufac- 
tured article ?" "Linen paper." "Linen paper worth 
more than rags?" "Yes." "Then take jour place 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 37 

with American industries." "Hello, machine, what 
are you? 77 "I am a gin mill." "Look here, I have 
not much confidence in you. You may have to have 
witnesses to what you say. What is your power?" 
"The votes of the Church people of this country." 
"Shut up." [Great applause.] "Yes, Stuart, that's 
right," says the gin mill. "You ask some of these 
men. The very day that all the Methodists and all 
the Baptists, to say nothing of all the other denomi- 
nations, shall cease to vote for me, that day I stop, 
stock still, never to go again." [Applause and cries 
from the audience: "That's so."] [Mr. Stuart turned 
on the platform and asked all the ministers : "Brother, 
is this so?" "Yes, sir." He turned to the audience 
and said: "Everyone that says this is so, answer your- 
self." And a great cry of "Yes ! yes ! yes !" came 
from all parts of the tabernacle.] "I had to have a 
great deal of evidence to believe what you say. But 
they have put it down on me. I must believe it." 
The power of the saloon is the votes of the Church 
people in this country; they hold the balance of 
power. "Turn on your power, ye members of the 
Church of Christ. Start your infernal machine. 
Bun it day and night, weekday and Sabbath. But 
what is your raw material ?" [Mr. Stuart called three 



38 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

little boys to the platform, put his arms around them, 
and stood a moment while the audience applauded.] 
"What is your raw material, I ask ?" "Our American 
boys." 

A young man was shot down in the streets of At- 
lanta some time ago. He was drinking. The man 
who shot him was drinking. In his pocket was found 
a list containing the names of eighty-five young men. 
On the paper was written: "These young men, to 
my knowledge, during the past few years have gone 
to their graves by liquor in Atlanta, Ga." Why are 
these little boys better than the eighty-five? They 
were mothers' boys, once as sweet and as innocent 
as these. How much depends upon whose boys you 
take! 

When preaching in Austin, Tex., I called a little 
boy to the platform. After my sermon was over, the 
pastor of the Methodist Church said: "George, do 
you know whose boy you called to the platform for 
your illustration ?" "No," said I. "He was the boy 
of the bookkeeper of the biggest wholesale liquor 
house in town." That night, in our gospel meeting, 
a man came weeping to the altar, and said : "I am 
the man whose boy you had on the platform last 
evening. Pray for me, that I may be a Christian." 



A SERMON" ON TEMPERANCE. OV 

Brother, when it gets jour boy you will be a Prohi- 
bitionist. 

When I made the liquor fight in Monroe, La., I 
stopped at the home of a banker. After my speech 
one night, the house of the banker was set on fire — 
and here let me say, that the men back of this in- 
fernal liquor traffic will do anything to stop the fight 
and perpetuate their nefarious business. During my 
liquor fight in Tennessee they burned down my two 
barns with my buggies and my horses, and any man 
in this country who takes up the liquor fight takes 
his life in his hands. An old friend of mine came to 
me and said : "George, this fight ought to be made, 
but the people of your town love you, and do not 
want to see your property burned up. Let somebody 
else do the work in your State." I said to him: 
a Wife and I have talked the matter over, and we are 
willing that they shall burn our property, and when 
the cause needs it, burn us too; but they will never 
hush my voice nor check my effort. The victory over 
this infernal traffic must rest on the ashes of martyrs, 
and we may as well begin. [Applause.] But to my 
illustration. The liquor men set fire to the banker's 
house in which I was stopping. The cry of fire was 
heard. He went to the telephone, which was near 



40 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

my sleeping-room. His voice was as soft as a wo- 
man's. He called up central. "Central, can you tell 
me where the fire is ?" When told that she thought 
it was the cotton compress, he replied: "Thank you, 
Central." But on going to his rear door and opening 
it, the flames were leaping from his own building. 
He threw up both hands, and screamed at the top of 
his voice: "My God, wife, it is our house ! It is our 
house afire!" The wildest excitement prevailed. 
The good fire company, however, saved us from much 
damage. The next morning I said: "My friend, when 
you thought it was the other man's house afire, it 
was, "Central, where is the fire ?" in the softest tones 
and the most indifferent way; but when you realized 
it was your own house afire, how different your con- 
duct ! When the liquor fire touches your home, you 
will be aroused to this subject. Here are somebody's 
boys. 

"These boys ?" "Yes, yes, yes, yes." "Turn on 
your power." "Give me these boys." But listen. 
What is that I hear? A man from the audience 
cries : "Not that boy; he is my boy." But who are 
you? This is an American institution, she has got to 
run. What care we for homes and hearts and lives. 
"Give me this boy." What is that I hear ? Another 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 41 

cry ? It is a mother : "Not that boy; he is the joy of 
my home and the light of my life." "Shut your 
mouth. Who are you ? What are American women 
and children ? This is an American institution, and 
she has got to run. If it takes millions of boys an- 
nually from the hearts and homes of our land, she 
has got to run. Give me that boy." "Turn on your 
power." Grind ! grind ! ! grind ! ! ! There is your 
manufactured article, body, mind and soul ground 
up. There it is. What is it ? A drunkard. Who is 
the drunkard? Mother's darling boy. What is he 
fit for? The railroads won't use him. The stores 
won't use him. Mechanics won't use him. He is a 
blight to society and a burden on the home. What 
is he fit for? A few of them are occasionally used 
in politics, but, thank God ! the day is nearly passed 
when liquor-soaked bloats can be elected to the offices 
of our land. [Applause.] 

I lift up this poor drunkard, the manufactured 
article of the saloon, and ask him again: "Of what 
were you made?" "Of a bright American boy, a 
boy capable of earning wages, and adding to the 
wealth of the home and the country." "What are 
you worth ?" "Nothing. I am a burden to the home 
and the State and the country." "Drunkard, what 



42 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

made you?" "The saloon over there made me." 
"Saloon, what made yon?" "The law over there 
made me." "Law, who made you ?" "That legisla- 
tor over there made me." "Legislator, who made 
you ?" "The ballot in the hands of the Churchman 
over there made me." "Churchman, did you cast the 
ballot that made the man that made the law that 
made the saloon that made the drunkard?" "Well, 
I always stick to my party." "That is not the ques- 
tion I asked you, sir. Did you vote for the man that 
voted for the law that made the saloon that made the 
drunkard?" "Yes. He represented my party, and 
I never scratch the ticket." Take this picture, my 
fellow-citizens; 1 here is a chain with the following 
links : a drunkard, a saloon, a law, a legislator, and a 
voter — five links. Do you see it? Let us go to the 
last link. "Poor drunkard, where are you going?" 
"To hell." "How do you know?" "The old Book 
says: ( ~No drunkard shall enter the kingdom of 
heaven.' " "Poor fellow, would to God I might 
save you." I go to the top of the chain. "Church- 
man, where are you going ?" "I am going to heaven." 
"How do you know?" "About forty years ago the 
Lord took my feet out of the mire and clay and placed 
them upon the Rock, and put a new song" — "Shut 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 43 

your mouth; shut your mouth. You miserable hypo- 
crite, I have a contempt for such twaddle." [Great 
applause.] 

Let every man hear this statement. If the lower 
link goes to hell and the upper does not, if the poor 
old drunkard goes to hell and the Churchmen, who 
voted for the saloon that made him, don't go with 
him, then the drunkard can stand on the black-crested 
waves of damnation and cry: "Unjust, unjust, un- 
just," until he will tear down the pillars of heaven. 
[Applause and cries of "Amen."] 

In my fight against the saloon in Weatherford, 
Tex., the court house was packed with men. I was 
representing the work of the gin mill to them. The 
ladies had prepared some flowers for the table. One 
of the brightest features of my fight against the 
liquor traffic is that though there are storms and dan- 
gers in the battle I fight, my battle is for helpless 
women and innocent children, and at every turn of 
the march I meet the flowers of their gratitude strewn 
along my pathway. I represented the sawmill with a 
bouquet, the grist mill with a bouquet, the paper mill 
with a bouquet. I said: "I do not want to repre- 
sent the saloon with a bouquet of flowers. Its mis- 
sion has been to destroy the brightest flowers of earth. 



44 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

Will some one lend me something by which I can 
represent this gin mill?" A gentleman took from 
one of the lamps a smoky lamp chimney, and handed 
that to me. After running the boys through this gin 
mill, and crushing their mind and soul and body, I 
held the smoky chimney up in my hand and asked 
the audience: "What shall I do with it?" A great 
big fellow, whose precious boy had been ground up 
in the gin mill, rose to his feet, with tears streaming 
down his face, and cried: "George, bust her!" The 
audience applauded. I held it a minute and asked 
again : "What shall I do with it ? It is your institu- 
tion." Twenty or thirty gentlemen yelled in concert : 
"Burst it !" I saw the fire was catching from man to 
man, and I held the chimney a moment in my hands 
and cried again, "Fellow-citizens, what shall I do 
with it?" and the entire audience screamed until 
they almost lifted the roof of the house, "BUST 
HER ! !" I turned to a post near and struck the lamp 
chimney against it, breaking it into a thousand 
pieces. I never heard such a yell go up from an au- 
dience, and as I stamped the pieces of glass beneath 
my feet I screamed myself like a Comanche Indian, 
for it seemed to me that the cracking of the glass 
beneath my feet was but a prophecy of the day when 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 45 

the American people would dash the saloon to the 
earth and tramp it back to the hell from which it 
came. [Great applause.] A telegram a week later 
announced the fact that Weatherf ord had carried for 
prohibition. [Applause.] 

"But," says a man, "we must operate this traffic to 
aid us in paying our taxes." Have you never learned 
that the saloon has never paid its way, that the ex- 
penses to run it are more than the taxes derived from 
it ? But if it were a fact that immense revenues were 
obtained from this traffic, the fathers and mothers of 
America are not yet willing to barter their boys for 
taxes. [Applause.] 

Among our mountains some years ago there lived 
a man who made a living by catching rattlesnakes. 
The reason he could thus make a living was that all 
the fools are not yet dead. He caught rattlesnakes 
and put them in boxes and covered them with glass 
and exhibited them on his front porch upon the pub- 
lic road, and sold them to curiosity hunters. This 
mountaineer had one child, a fat-faced, chubby- 
handed, sweet little child he called Jim. He always 
met him on his home-coming at the front gate. The 
old mountaineer, when not bringing home a rattle- 
snake, would gather him in his arms and kiss his 



46 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

chubby face. He could taste the sweetness of his 
boy's cheek through the heavy layer of dirt. Jim 
was the most precious object on earth to him. He 
brought a rattlesnake from the mountains one day, 
placed it alive in the glass-covered box, slipped the 
lid over it, and stepped out to the wood-pile to chop 
some wood. Little Jim came up to the glass-covered 
box, pulled back the lid, and, with his chubby little 
hands, pulled the live reptile on the lap of his little 
linsey dress. The snake planted his fangs in the 
cheek of the little fellow while he screamed: "Papa ! 
papa ! ! papa ! ! !" The father, hearing his cries, ran 
with axe in hand, slipped the handle of the axe into 
the coils of the snake, threw it into the yard, and 
chopped its head off. Gathering little Jim in his 
arms, he began to cry: "Jim's dead! Jim's dead!" 
His neighbor Tom, hearing the cry, ran over to his 
cabin home. As the little boy lay on his mother's lap, 
his body swelling and his eyes bloodshot, the moun- 
taineer said to his neighbor: "Tom, little Jim is 
going to die, and I would not give little Jim for every 
rattlesnake on these old mountains and for every dol- 
lar I have made off of them." Brother, we have got 
the serpent of the still, and put him in our glass-front 
saloons for the hope of the revenue. But our boys 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 47 

have stepped off the home steps and walked down 
into the glass-front saloons, pulled this serpent npon 
their hearts and lives, and the great cry comes up 
from all the earth to-day : "My boy is gone ! My boy 
is gone !" I never look into the bloated face or blood- 
shot eyes of a drunkard American boy but that I 
don't say in my heart: "I would not give that one 
American boy for every dollar we have made off the 
infernal stuff." [Applause.] 

A widow with two noble young boys traded her 
country home for a cottage in one of our towns. The 
cottage was near a little shoe shop, where the honest 
workman plied his honest trade to the hurt of nobody. 
These boys went and came in their daily toil, and 
were innocent and happy about the cottage door of 
their widowed mother. But a saloon took the place 
of the shoe shop, and the music in the saloon attracted 
these boys. A while they stood on the outside and 
listened, and then they stood on the inside, and then 
the saloon got on the inside of them, and you know 
the old story. The mother wept over her drunken 
boys. The oldest, intoxicated on the public square, 
picked a quarrel with a man, drew his knife, and 
started toward him, and was shot down on the street. 
They carried his bleeding body to his broken-hearted 



48 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

mother. It was but a short time until the other boy 
came to his death through that same saloon. And 
this widow joined the great army of suffering moth- 
ers who make contributions of the precious boys to 
this infernal traffic. A little while after her last boy 
was buried, the saloon took fire at midnight, and from 
it her little cottage caught fire, and she barely es- 
caped with her life. She sat upon a little pile of wood 
in her yard at the midnight hour, with her sad face 
in her wrinkled hands, while the dying embers of her 
little cottage threw their ghosts upon her pitiful 
form. The crowd that gathered were moved by the 
picture. A subscription was started, and soon a man 
stood by her, saying: "Don't cry any more; we have 
raised money enough to replace your house." Lift- 
ing her face from her hands, she said: "I wan't cry- 
ing about the little house ; it wan't much, no way, 1 
wan't crying about the furniture; there was little of 
it. But that same old saloon burned up John and 
Willie; and nobody got up a paper to save my boys; 
and if you cannot bring back John and bring back 
Willie, don't bother about the little house. My life 
is ruined anyway." I am the man, fellow-citizens, 
to circulate the paper to down the saloons and save 
the boys. [Applause.] 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 49 

In the whisky fight in Kentucky I told this story 
to an audience of three or four thousand people, and 
an Irish woman with a sweet old care-worn face came 
running up the aisle, and stopping just in front of 
me, and, lifting up both her hands, while the tears 
ran down her wrinkled face — I wish I could repeat 
her words in her Irish brogue, for the very brogue 
seemed to lend pathos to every sentence — she cried: 
"Misther Stuart, the saloons have got me boy; the 
saloons have got me boy; the saloons have got me 
dairling boy." As I looked into her tearful face and 
heard her pathetic words I felt that my heart would 
burst and fall in blood at her feet. I said: "Will 
every woman in the audience who can join this 
broken-hearted woman in saying, 'The saloons have 
got my boy, or my father, or my husband/ hold your 
hands up." Hundreds of hands went up over the 
whole audience. Some were white hands ; some were 
wrinkled; some were clad in kid gloves, and some in 
cotton gloves. I pointed to the uplifted hands, and 
said: "Fellow-citizens of Kentucky, I don't know 
what kind of stuff you are made of, but God Almighty 
made a boy from the mountains of Tennessee of the 
stuff that will walk up by the side of these women 
with their uplifted hands, and raise the black flag 



50 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STTJART. 

and fight to the death the # inf ernal curse that blights 
their homes and blights their lives." [Applause.] 

During one of our great tabernacle meetings 
Brother Jones and I got a telegram from Bowling 
Green, Ky., stating : "We are in the liquor fight. We 
must have the help of Sam Jones or George Stuart." 
Brother Sam read the telegram and said: "George, 
one of us must go." I replied: "Hold this meeting 
and I will go; but I will run up to my home and 
kiss my wife and mother and children." The fires 
at my home and the threats at various times had 
made my home folks a little nervous. My wife and 
mother followed me to the gate and kissed me. 
Mother said: "My boy, be very careful; you are going 
into a very dangerous fight;" and then, remember- 
ing how the infernal liquor traffic had blighted and 
saddened her home, she said, "But do your duty for 
the poor suffering women of Kentucky, and God will 
take care of you." I walked off of my home steps with 
the kiss of my mother and wife and little ones still 
warm on my lips, committing my life to the care of 
Him who gave it. Stepping off the train at Bowling 
Green, a committee met me. They said: "George, 
she's as hot as a cook stove. If you spit on her, she 
will fry. We thought a committee had better meet 



A SERMON" ON TEMPERANCE. 51 

you for safety." As I walked up the street I heard 
the comments of the enemy. For days and nights I 
stood on the public square of that city and fought 
for "God and home and native land." When the 
last speech was made I took the train for home, tired 
and worn with the battle. The evening I arrived 
home I was lying on the lounge resting, when my 
door-bell rang. My wife announced a telegram, say- 
ing: "You need not get up. It does not need any 
answer; it is only good news from Bowling Green. 
"Bowling Green carried for prohibition. Thank 
God and Stuart." [Great applause.] Every person 
who has a handkerchief get it ready. I will tell you 
a handkerchief story. Lying there on the lounge, I 
took my handkerchief from my pocket, and, waving 
it, while tears of gratitude ran down my cheeks, I 
said: "Wife, the day is coming when the pure white 
banner of temperance will wave its graceful folds 
over the downfall of every saloon in glorious old 
America." Those of you who will enter the battle of 
the white flag, work for victory, and shout in tri- 
umph, let us hail the oncoming victory by waving 
our handkerchiefs. [Thousands of white handker- 
chiefs fluttered in the air, presenting a marvelous 
scene, while from all over the building shouts of en- 



52 SERMONS BY GEO. E. STUAET. 

thusiasm— "Amen!" "Hallelujah!" "Glory to God!" 
— went up from the audience, while Mr. Stuart stood 
waving his handkerchief and stamping his foot, and 
crying: "Down with the infernal saloon! down with 
the infernal saloon !" It was several minutes before 
the excitement and enthusiasm of the audience 
quieted down so the speaker could continue.] 

I close my talk of the evening with this little in- 
cident connected with the battle at Bowling Green. 
I passed through that town after the saloons were 
voted out, and my friends gathered around me and 
told me of the results of the victory. One merchant 
said: "A few weeks after the saloons were closed I 
saw a drinking-man walk out of my store with shoes, 
domestics and calico. I touched one of the men in 
the store, and said: 'There goes George Stuart's man 
now. Look at him. Instead of liquor, he carries 
home to his wife and children the comforts of life.' " 
The milkman came up, and said : "George, I wish you 
could have been with me a few rounds in my wagon 
after the saloons were put out." I said : "What about 
it?" He replied: "The milk would not hold out." 
[Applause.] He said: "I drove up to a drunkard's 
cottage, and a little girl carne out to the wagon." 
God pity the little girls of the drunkards ! "I noticed 



A SERMON ON TEMPERANCE. 53 

that her face was brighter than usual, and she said : 
'We want a quart of milk this morning.' I replied: 
'No, you don't. I know what you get. You only 
want a half -pint.' But as they did not pay promptly 
for that, I did not care to increase it. Looking up 
into my face, she said: 'Yes, sir, we do; we want a 
quart of milk this morning.' I said: 'No, you don't; 
I know what to give you.' She called her mamma to 
the door, and as her mother stepped to the door with 
a full week's milk tickets in her hands, the little girl 
said: 'Mamma, don't we want a quart of milk this 
morning?' The mother said: 'Yes, we will take a 
quart of milk.' As I filled up the cup of the little 
girl until the white milk crowned it, she looked up 
with a smile playing over her sweet little face, and 
said: 'Mr. Stuart drove the saloons out of Bowling 
Green, and papa has quit drinking, and we are going 
to get a quart of milk every morning now.' " [Great 
applause.] 

Brother ! brother ! My life-work is to push the 
bottle from every drunkard's hand, and to crown the 
cup of their helpless children with pure life-giving 
milk. Will you help me ? Every one in this great 
audience, men and women, who will join the fight, 
stand on your feet. 



54 



SERMONS BY GEO. B. STUABT. 



The large audience jumped to their feet amid the 
greatest enthusiasm, and a voice from the platform 
cried : "Thank God, everybody is up !" 

Some one started, "Praise God from whom all 
blessings flow," and the audience sang it with wild 
enthusiasm. Following this, Sam Jones made a char- 
acteristic talk of thirty or forty minutes, and the 
great audience was dismissed. 



<^ 




THE CHRISTIAN HOME.* 

Genesis xviii. 19: "For I know him, that he will command his 
children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way 
of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring 
upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him." 



I shall throw myself upon the sympathy and pray- 
ers of this great audience to-night as I invite your 
attention to a subject that ought to engage the 
thought of every character present. If you are a 
father or a mother, a son or a daughter, the subject 
of this hour ought to secure your thoughtful atten- 
tion. I shall go with you to-night to 

The Dearest and Most Sacred Spot on Earth 

to you and me — a spot around which cluster the 
sweetest associations and the most precious mem- 
ories. I shall speak to-night of home. The longer 
I live, the more I visit from home to home, the more 
I see of the sorrows and cares, the successes and 
failures of this life, the more I am impressed that 

* This sermon was preached Friday evening, March 8, 1895, to 
five thousand people, in the great entertainment hall in the Ex- 
position building in St. Louis, Mo., during the Jones-Stuart meet- 
ings in that city. 

55 



56 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

the home problem is the greatest problem of our 
civilization. The homes of our country are so many 
streams pouring themselves into the great current of 
moral, social and political life. If the home life is 
pure, all is pure. The home is the center of every- 
thing. 

From the proper or improper settlement of the 
home question comes more of joy or sorrow, more 
of weal or woe, than from all other questions com- 
bined. Build your palaces, amass your great for- 
tunes, pile up your luxuries all about you, provide 
for the satisfaction of every desire; but as you sit 
amid these luxuries and wait for the staggering steps 
of a drunken son, or contemplate the downward steps 
of a wayward daughter, happiness flies out of your 
heart and your home. There is nothing that can 
render happy the parents of godless and wayward 
children. Around the home circle of the cottage or 
the palace are greater possibilities of joy or sorrow 
than in all the rest of the world. ~Not only does the 
happiness of the world center in the home, but the 
moral, social and civil life of the world emanates from 
the home. Every drunkard, every gambler, every 
debauchee, every lost character once sat in mother's 
lap and learned the mother tongue and mother 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME. 57 

thought and mother action — the mother life. The 
downfall of every character can be traced to some 
defect in the home life. If God Almighty has fixed 
it up so we cannot take our children to heaven with 
us, He has put us in a horrible condition. The pret- 
tiest picture earth furnishes is a whole family on the 
way to heaven; the most horrible picture is a whole 
family on the way to hell. I believe in the truth of 
the proverb of this Book: "Train up a child in the 
way he should go, and when he is old he will not de- 
part from it." A child properly trained up to the 
proper point will not go astray. The normal way to 
get rid< of drunkards is to quit raising them; the 
normal way to get rid of liars, thieves and debauchees 
is to quit raising them. Every man steps from the 
home door into the social, moral and the civil world. 
What he is upon the home step he will be in the field 
of life. When Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Talmage were 
talking over the great international questions, Mr. 
Gladstone flashed his intelligent eye upon the great 
preacher and said : "There is but one question. Settle 
that right, and you settle all others. That question is 
Christianity." I stand in my place to-night to say 
that if you settle Christianity right in the home it 
settles all questions everywhere. National life never 
rises above the home life and never sinks below it. 



58 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

When the Lacedaemonian desired Lycurgus to es- 
tablish a democracy in the State, he replied: "Go 
you, friend, and make the experiment first in your 
own house." Napoleon, being asked "What is the 
greatest want of the French people ?" said : "Moth- 
ers." Church life cannot rise higher than home life. 
I have no faith in the woman that talks of heaven 
at Church, and makes a hell of her home. If I were 
investigating a woman's piety, I would rather take 
the evidence of the cook than of the preacher. The 
talk of a clean heart at the Church is discounted 
when no soap is used at home. The talk of a perfect 
Christian life is discounted by the absence of buttons 
and big patches on the clothes of unkempt children 
at home. Some men talk in the Church like angels 
and talk to their families like demons. Church re- 
legion never goes above home religion. You cannot 
shout higher than you live. Home is the head foun- 
tain. When water rises up above its fountain it has 
to be forced with an air pump. When I hear people 
talking at Church higher than they live at home, I 
know the talk is pumped up. People who do not quar- 
rel at home rarely quarrel with their neighbors. As 
we live in the home world, so we live in all worlds, 
whatever our professions are. 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME. 59 

Henry Grady, the brilliant Georgia orator, so 
short-lived, to the regret of this great republic, tells 
us where he found the home of his country. As he 
stood in Washington and looked) upon the capitol 
for the first time tears came to his eyes, and he said 
to himself: u Here is the home of my nation. That 
building is the official home of the greatest nation 
God's eye ever saw." A few weeks later, after spend- 
ing the night in an old-fashioned country home, 
where the noble Christian father read from the old- 
fashioned Bible and knelt with his children around 
the family altar; and after having associated for a 
day and night with the manly Christian man and 
the noble Christian woman in this old-fashioned 
Christian home, he said : "I was mistaken in Wash- 
ington; that pile of marble, magnificent as it is, is 
not the home of my country, but here in these coun- 
try homes are reared the men and women of my 
country.' ' These homes give us our men and women. 
Brick and marble do not make a country; men and 
women make a country. When God himself would 
start a nation He made the home life the deciding 
question, and selected Abraham as the foundation 
on the ground set forth in my text. Because God 
knew him, that he would command his children and 



60 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

his household after him, and that Grod would there- 
fore be able "to bring upon Abraham that which he 
had spoken of him." 

God's ideal nation starts with the home, with the 
father of the home "walking in the way of the Lord 
to do justice and judgment/' and his children and 
his household following after him. 

The two central ideas of the home life expressed 
in this text are the fundamental ideas of 

A Successful Home and National Life. 

Home authority and home example is expressed in 
the words, "He will command his children and his 
household after him." The ten years I spent as a 
school-teacher, where from the log school-house in 
the mountains to the boarding college of the towns, 
I met every class and condition of children — where, 
as the old gladiator said, "I met upon the arena 
every shape of man or beast" — I learned the great 
truth of this text, that home authority and home 
example settle the great questions of life and char- 
acter. The years spent as a Methodist preacher, visit- 
ing from house to house, and the years spent in 
traveling over this great country of ours, have only 
furnished illustrations on every hand in proof of the 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME. 61 

fact that neither the law nor the gospel can make a 
Christian nation without the help of home authority 
and home example. Anarchy is not born in the Hay- 
market of Chicago; outlawism is not born in street 
mobs. The question of obedience to law is settled in 
childhood. The child who does not obey his father 
and mother will obey neither social, civil, nor divine 
laws. When God said, "Children, obey your parents," 
He told the world where obedience originates. 

The Most Dangerous Sign of the Times 

is the neglect of home life and the growing disre- 
spect of children for parents. Themistocles once 
said: "My little child rules all Greece.'' When asked 
what he meant, he replied: a The little child rules 
its mother, the mother rules me, I rule Athens, and 
Athens rules all Greece." That old Grecian family 
has many representatives in this country. 

A little six-year-old boy can scream and stamp and 
boss a household, postpone a trip, change a pro- 
gramme, and bring father and mother to his terms. 
I was in a home sometime ago where a father asked 
a little six-year-old child to shut the door. She re- 
plied: "I won't do it." He said: "Poor papa will 
have to shut it himself." She replied: "I don't care; 



62 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

I won't." And I saw poor papa get up and shut 
the door. Having been an old school-teacher, I 
wanted to borrow that child for about fifteen minutes ; 
but upon mature reflection I decided that her father 
was the fellow that needed lending. ~No man can 
bring a greater curse upon law and order and a good 
civilization than to turn such creatures out into the 
world. Uncontrolled at six, and outlaws at twenty. 
A lady once heard me tell this incident. Her little 
boy was present. She asked him on their return 
home if he had heard the incident. He replied : "Yes, 
mamma." She asked him what the little girl needed, 
supposing that he would answer, "A whipping;" but 
the little philosopher replied, "She needed a daddy." 
The need of the world to-day, in the vernacular of 
that child, is some first-class daddies and mammies. 
Many of our boys are like the fellow who came 
down the river to Knoxville on a log raft with his 
father, and when asked where he was "brought up," 
replied: "I wa'n't brought up at all. I just come 
down on the raft with dad." Many boys have never 
been properly brought up; they just drifted along 
with a careless father. 

The learning of the academy, the college, the 
university, may fade from the mind, but the simple 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME. 63 

lessons of home defy years, and live on. The words 
of a mother make deeper impressions than any other 
words that touch our plastic childhood. The mother 
of Walter Scott was well educated and a great lover 
of poetry and painting. The mother of Byron was 
proud and ill-tempered and violent. The mother of 
Napoleon Bonaparte was full of ambition and energy. 
The mother of Lord Bacon was a woman of superior 
mind and deep piety. The mother of Nero was a 
murderess. The mother of Washington was a pure 
and good woman. The mother of Patrick Henry 
was eloquent in speech. The mother of John and 
Charles Wesley was intelligent and pious and full 
of executive ability. The mother of Doddridge 
taught him Scripture history from the Dutch tiles 
on the fireplace, on which there were pictures of sub- 
jects taken from the Bible. 

When the devil robs a boy the last thing he takes 
are the early impressions made by his father and 
mother. 

I talked with a trainer of the finest lot of educated 
dogs that ever went through this country. I asked 
him to give me two or three rules for training dogs. 
He replied: "First, I get the dog when he is a pup. 
I get full control of the pup, and then everything is 



D4: SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

easy. I have him to do over and over the part he 
is to perform in public until it becomes a habit." As 
I walked away I said: "God gives us our children 
when they are little. He has made them to look like 
us, talk like us, and to imitate us naturally in all we 
do and say." What an opportunity! And if we 
were only as wise as the dog trainer, and would get 
complete control of the child, and have him to per- 
form over and over the part he is to play upon the 
stage of human life, we should find the truth of the 
proverb, "Train up a child in the way he should go, 
and when he is old he will not depart from it." 

Prayer and Hickory. 

A lady who had raised seven noble Christian sons, 
with not a black sheep in the fold, was asked by an 
old friend of mine how she did it. She replied: "I 
did it with prayer and hickory." Two better instru- 
ments were never used. I do not mean to encourage 
the brutal punishment of children, but when solid 
piety and wholesome authority go hand in hand obe- 
dient and pious children follow. Example and au- 
thority go together. God knew that Abraham would 
command his children after him. 

After delivering this sermon in the State of Vir- 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME. 65 

ginia on one occasion, a gentleman came to me, 
gripped my hand, and said, with tears in his eyes: 
"Don't fail, wherever you go, to impress upon the 
people that old woman's prayer-and-hickory method." 
He said: "I was the indulgent father of an only son. 
I was sitting by my fire one night after my boy had 
been sent home for insubordination to college au- 
thority for the second time. Wife said: 'Why don't 
you come to bed?' I replied: 'I cannot sleep.' 
'Why?' said she. I said: 'I am thinking about our 
boy.' She replied: 'It is your fault; you have never 
controlled him, and how could you expect others to 
do so?' The words were like a dagger in my heart, 
but I knew they were true. I sunk down on my 
knees by the chair and said: '0 God, if you will for- 
give the past, I will control that boy in the future.' 
I slept but little that night. The next morning, after 
breakfast, I said to the boy: 'Come and go with me.' 
He was fifteen years of age. We walked out into a 
woodland near the house. I cut a good switch and 
rehearsed to the boy his course of disobedience, and 
explained to him my own mistakes, and told him 
that I had brought him out there to correct him for 
his disobedience. I told him to take off his coat. He 

replied: 'I won't do it.' I looked him in the face 
5 



66 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

and said: *My boy, I am your father; you are my son. 
I promised God Almighty last night on my knees 
that I would control you, and I will whip you here 
this morning, or you or I will die in this woodland. 
Take off your coat, sir !' He saw in my eye for the 
first time in his life the spirit of authority. He 
drew his coat in a moment, and I gave him a 
whipping, at the conclusion of which I said, '!Now 
kneel down with me;' and we knelt there together, 
and I told God of my own neglect and of my boy's 
wayward conduct, and promised God in the hearing 
of my boy to be faithful to my duty the remainder 
of my life, and prayed God's blessing on my way- 
ward child. When we arose from our knees he put 
his arm around my neck and his head on my bosom. 
We wept together for a long time. Then he looked 
up and said : 'Father, I will never give you any more 
trouble.' And from that day to this I have never 
had a care about him; he has been the most obedient 
son a father ever had. He is married now, is a 
steward in the Methodist Church, and no truer, 
nobler Christian man walks the earth than my 
precious son." 

How many a wayward boy all over this country 
might be saved by the proper combination of whole- 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME. 67 

some authority and a Godly example ! Our children 
are turned out on the streets of the cities, and God 
only knows where they go and what they do. The 
boys and girls in this country are like Tennessee oats 
in dry weather — they "head" too soon. Girls are 
women at thirteen, and boys are men at fifteen. 

Our Mothers. 

Passing down the streets of Chattanooga, I saw an 
old cow trotting along at the rear of a wagon. She 
was not tied, but everywhere the wagon went the 
nose of the old cow was close to the hind gate. She 
paid no attention to carriage or wagon or street car. 
She followed the wagon, and I could not understand 
it. I waited until the wagon approached me, and 
ascertained the secret. A little calf was in a box 
up in that wagon. She was determined to see what 
became of her calf. I pointed it out to a friend, and 
then called his attention to three little boys stand- 
ing in the door of a saloon across the street, and said : 
"I do not know where the mother of those boys is, 
but that old cow is a more faithful mother than the 
mother of those three boys. The old cow is de- 
termined to know where her calf goes, but the mother 
of those boys doesn't care where they go." I never 



68 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

see a hen gather her little ones under her wings as 
a hawk flies over the yard but I wish while our 
moral atmosphere is literally full of the hawks of 
hell that our mothers and fathers would keep their 
children close under the parental wing, and shield 
them from temptations of the evil one. 

Mrs. Wesley, who gave to the world such a noble 
family, the lives of whom will bless the world for 
generations to come, heeded the command of God in 
the rearing of her nineteen children. Her first step, 
she says, was to get complete control of the child. 
How this is done I cannot tell you. I wish I could 
give an unerring rule, but the rule differs with the 
disposition of the child. One thing is true: authority 
is necessary. Take the child and the problem to God, 
but as you love your child and fear your God, secure 
its obedience to your authority. 

A poor young man who stood before the judge to 
be sentenced to death, when the judge asked him if 
he had anything to say why the sentence of death 
should not be passed upon him, bowed his head and 
said: "O, if Fd had a mother." Many a boy who has 
gone into a life of reckless folly, without the re- 
straints of home, can stand up in his debauch to- 
night, and say, "O, if Fd had a mother! O, if Fd 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME. 



had a mother I" Some boys can say like the tramp, 
when asked how long he had been an orphan, said : "I 
was born an orphan." I am profoundly thankful 
above all things for the fact that I have a good 
mother — a mother who, when she said "George, you 
shall not," I did not. If I did, then she did. I owe 
all that I am, morally and religiously, to the au- 
thority of a good mother. I also owe my life to that 
authority. I give this little history, which is sacred 
to me. A few years ago I and three other young men 
planned a trip to Europe. We had read and talked 
and planned for months. A few months before we 
were ready to start I mentioned the trip to my 
mother, who, since my father's death, has made her 
home with me — and it has been my sweetest pleasure 
to give her the sunniest and best room in my home. 
When I mentioned the trip she said: "George, I am 
getting old; you are my only stay; I am afraid of 
the ocean; I cannot let you go while I live. Wait 
till I am gone, and then you can go to Europe." I 
thought it was a mere kind of sentiment with mother, 
and that I would get all things ready for the trip, 
and that in the kindness of her heart she would yield 
her consent. I had made arrangements, temporarily, 
as some of you possibly have done permanently, to 



70 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

have my father-in-law take care of my wife and chil- 
dren, and all things were ready for the trip. A short 
while before we were ready to start I stated in the 
presence of my mother: "Well, we are off soon for 
Europe." She looked up and said: "What is that, 
George?" I said: "We have everything ready, the 
trip is all organized, and we start for Europe soon." 
Straightening up in her chair, she looked me straight 
in the face and said: "George, I told you once I did 
not want you to go. I have thought over this trip 
and prayed over it, and I cannot give my consent for 
you to go ; and now I tell you so that you will under- 
stand it: You shall not go." I said: "Mother, do not 
put it that way." I tried to argue the question, say- 
ing: "It is one of the sweetest hopes of my life that 
you are crushing." She said: "George, I have prayed 
over it; my mind is made up. We will not discuss 
it; you shall not go, and that settles it." And when 
she said that I knew it did settle it, and I surrendered 
what to me was one of the most pleasant hopes of my 
life. I hunted up my companions, and said: "Fm 
not in it." They excitedly exclaimed: "What's the 
matter?" I said: "Mother won't let me go." They 
said: "Are you not twenty-one, married and got chil- 






THE CHRISTIAN HOME. 71 

dren, and yet tied to jour mother's apron strings?" 
I said: "I would not cross the old Atlantic against my 
mother's wishes for a million dollars." 

A few days later I got a letter from Brother Jones, 
asking me to accompany him on a trip to Canada. 
The following week we were plowing across Lake 
Ontario. It was a bright day. Brother Jones, wife, 
and I were sitting on the deck of the vessel, and as 
she plowed the blue waters I said: "This is glorious; 
how I wish it were on the Atlantic, and I were headed 
for Europe. I shall always feel that mother was a 
little harsh in breaking up my European trip." 
Brother Jones said, "Well, old boy, the whales might 
have gotten you in the Atlantic;" and we dropped 
the subject. On our return we were going into the 
supper table at Buffalo, E". Y. Brother Jones bought 
the !New York World. Just as we reached the din- 
ing-room door he said: "George, there has been a 
terrible railroad wreck at Thaxton, Ya. My! what 
a list of the killed!" Looking at the list, I saw 
"Cleveland, Tenn." I snatched the paper from his 
hand and read, while my blood ran cold: "John M. 
Hardwick, Cleveland, Tenn., killed and burned; Wil- 
liam Marshall, Cleveland, Tenn., killed and burned; 



72 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

Willie Steed, Cleveland, Tenn., killed and burned." 
I threw up my hands and said: "Oh, Sam, the next 
name would have been 'George E. Stuart, Cleveland, 
Tenn., killed and burned/ but for the authority of 
my precious mother !" I ran out to a bulletin board, 
found when the first train toward home was due. We 
turned from our journey and came immediately 
home. I found my little town gathered about the 
streets, and sadness resting like a cloud upon the 
whole town. As I walked up the street the mother 
of one of the boys, in whose home I had boarded in 
other days (she was almost as a mother to me), ran 
out on the streets and said: "O George, if I only had 
the body of my precious boy !" When I reached the 
gate I saw my mother come running; she threw her 
arms around me and said: "Thank God! my boy is 
safe." And I said: "Mother, I never missed it when 
I took your advice. I am sure I shall take it from 
this to the grave." I found I had never learned what 
God meant when He said : "Honor thy father and thy 
mother: that thy days may be long upon the land 
which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Home au- 
thority has saved life and it has saved character and 
saved thousands of souls; for the lack of it the world 



THE CHKISTIAN HOME. 73 

is going to rot. But home authority is worth little 

without 

Home Example. 

It is the nature of the child to follow. Did you 
ever start across the room, mother, and hear a thud 
on the floor, and look around to find that little Mary 
had caught your dress and attempted to follow yon, 
and you had jerked her sprawling on the floor? 
Father, did you never, on reaching the gate on your 
departure from home, find little John at your heels, 
and as you closed the gate before him he looked up 
piteously and cried: "Papa, let me go wid ? oo." The 
children go with us — they follow us. How beauti- 
ful the sight to see father and mother walking in the 
ways of righteousness, followed by the large house- 
hold of God! How horrible the sight to see the 
wicked father and mother start off to hell, and every 
little child following ! How horrible to see them 
lead one at a time into that awful abyss, and there 
each recognize the other, and the parents realize that 
they led them there ! Stop, my brother ! Stop, my 
sister ! do not go farther in that direction with those 
precious little ones following you. They look into 
your faces and ask the way. They see your tracks 
and follow. 



74 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

Sometime ago I heard a roar of laughter in the 
hall of niy own home. I walked out of my study, and 
found the household laughing immoderately at my 
little boy, who was coming down the stairs dressed 
in a full suit of my clothing. He had tied a string 
around the buttons of my pants, and pulled the waist- 
band close up under his arms, and rolled the pants 
up at the bottom. The vest reached to his knees, 
the long coat dragged the floor, the big hat almost hid 
his head, and his feet were lost in my number nine 
shoes. How comical, how funny it seemed to the 
family ! but as I looked upon it I saw the serious side, 
and said: "Wife, that is not a laughable picture to 
me. It has in it a lesson as touching as the great 
realities of life. That sight teaches me that the lit- 
tle boy wants to be like his father — wants to wear 
his father's shoes and walk as his father; dress in his 
father's clothes and be as his father. God help me 
go right I" I sent that boy, by the servant, to the 
nailery that morning and had his picture taken. That 
little picture is kept in my writing desk drawer, and 
every time I open that drawer that little picture talks 
to me, and says: "Look out, papa; I'm following you." 
Every father who hears my voice to-night should not 
forget that there are scenes in your homes that talk 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME. 75 

to you every day and cry out to you as piteously as 
life and death: "Look out, papa; look out, mamma; 
I'm coming after you." Don't go wrong; don't lead 
little feet astray. 

A father coming into his home sometime ago heard 
his little boy and little girl quarreling as if they were 
going to fight. He said: "Why, children, why are 
you quarreling so with each other?" The little boy 
smilingly replied : "Why, papa, we are not quarreling 
in earnest; we are just playing papa and mamma." 
Those little fellows had heard something. If we 
watch our little fellows, we will see them playing 
papa and mamma in more ways than one. 

A Baptist minister told me of a little boy whom 
he had found in his rounds of pastoral visiting with 
his hair clipped close from the top of his head, pre- 
senting a most comical picture, which called for the 
following explanation by his mother: "This little fel- 
low got hold of my scissors yesterday, and the first 
thing I knew he had clipped the hair off the top of 
his head, and when I asked him why he did it he 
replied with an air of victory: 'Make my head like 
papa's head.' " His father was a bald-headed man. 
How often we find a boy's head like his father's head. 
Look out, skeptic. 



76 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

In one of Tennessee's cities a special friend of 
mine walked down to the Tennessee river with two 
bright, promising boys. He said: "Boys, we will try 
a swim together." And with his boys at his side they 
swam together out toward the current of the river. 
Away out in the current the father called a halt and 
advised a return, but as they turned to go back to 
the shore the waters proved too swift, the distance 
too great, and the two boys sunk by his side. He 
swam to the shore, piteously crying: "My boys are 
gone." He said: "The mistake I made was, I swam 
out too far with the boys." I am talking to men 
who are swimming out into the current of social life 
and amusements and dissipation with their bright 
boys at their side. Some of these days they will call 
a halt and start back to the shores of sobriety and 
piety; but the boys will be carried off with the cur- 
rent, and they will walk the shores of life sad and 
lonely, breathing from their broken hearts the sad- 
dest of all sentences : "My boys are gone ! my boys 
are gone !" Stop, my brother; stop. Come back to 
God to-night. Bring those bright boys with you. 
Don't go farther into the current of worldliness. 

An old local preacher in our Conference lived a 
life of simple piety and unquestionable honesty be- 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME. 77 

fore a family of boys and girls. His sons have been 
honorable. One of them, who has been to the United 
States Congress, gave this little incident to my pre- 
siding elder. He said: "I have never doubted my 
father's piety. He has lived without reproach, a 
Christian life in his own home. But in spite of all 
teachings and example with which I have been so 
wonderfully blessed, little doubts would still enter 
my mind. When my father came to his death bed I 
said to myself: 'Eow is the time for me to settle some 
questions.' I walked up to the bedside of my dying 
father and said: 'Father, I know two things, you can 
tell me another; and these things will settle the 
problems of life.' My father said: 'What are they, 
my son?' I replied: 'I know that you have been an 
honest man — you never told a story in your life. 
Secondly, I know you have practiced the teachings 
of the Christian religion as perfectly as man has ever 
followed his Christ. 'Now the question you can tell 
me is this : Is this religion all you hoped it would be 
in the hour of death? Has it in life and death proved 
a reality to you?' My father looked up, a smile 
played over his face, a tear of triumph filled his eye, 
and he replied : 'My son, I know whom I have trusted, 
and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which 



78 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

I have committed to Him against that day. Thank 
God, Christianity was all that I could ask for in life, 
and more than I hoped it could be in the hour of 
death. I have lived a happy life and die a triumph- 
ant death. Thank God there is a reality in the re- 
ligion of Christ.' " The son said: "I walked away 
from the bedside of my dying father, and, so help 
me God, from that day to this not a shadow of doubt 
has ever found place in my mind. When I went to 
the United States Congress, among the first packages 
of my mail was a package containing the works of 
Colonel Ingersoll, with his compliments to me. I 
opened the package. The very sight of those books 
brought up the smiling face and triumphant words 
of my dying father. I carried the books and dropped 
them into the grate and saw them burn to ashes. I 
washed my hands with soap and dried them on the 
towel, and that is as near as I have come to going 
back on the faith and life of my precious father." 
This bit of history teaches us the power of Godly ex- 
ample. Thank God for Christian parents whose lives 
are great beacon lights along the shore to guide us 
from the dangerous rocks into a haven of rest ! 

While Sam Jones and I were preaching in Nash- 
ville I told this little incident. At the conclusion 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME. 79 

of my sermon a Methodist preacher came up and laid 
his hand upon my shoulder and said: "Brother 
Stuart, how your sermon to-day carried me back to 
my home. My father was a local preacher, and the 
best man I ever saw. He is gone to heaven now. 
We have a large family; mother is still at home, and 
I should like to see all the children together once 
more and have you come and dedicate our home to 
God, while we all rededicate ourselves to God before 
precious old mother leaves us. If you will come with 
me, I will gather all the family together next Friday 
for that purpose." I consented to go. The old 
home was a short distance from the city of Nashville. 
There were a large number of brothers and sisters. 
One was a farmer; one was a doctor; one was a real 
estate man; one was a bookkeeper; one was a 
preacher; and so on, so that they represented many 
professions of life. The preacher brother drove me 
out to the old home, where had gathered all the chil- 
dren. As we drove up to the gate I saw the brothers 
standing in little groups about in the yard, whittling 
and talking. Did you never stand in the yard of the 
old home after an absence of many years, and enter- 
tain memories brought up by every beaten path and 
tree and gate, and building about the old place. I 



80 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

was introduced to these noble-looking men who, as 
the preacher brother told me, were all members of 
Churches, living consistent Christian lives, save the 
younger boy, who had wandered away a little, and 
the real object of this was to bring him back to God. 

The old mother was indescribably happy. There 
was a smile lingering in the wrinkles of her dear old 
face. We all gathered in the large old-fashioned 
family room in the old-fashioned semicircle, with 
mother in her natural place in the corner. The 
preacher brother laid the large family Bible in my 
lap and said: "Now, Brother Stuart, you are in the 
home of a Methodist preacher; do what you think 
best." 

I replied : "As I sit to-day in the family of a Meth- 
odist preacher, let us begin our service by an old- 
fashioned experience meeting. I want each child, in 
the order of your ages, to tell your experience." 

The oldest arose and pointed his finger at the oil 
portrait of his father, hanging on the wall, and said 
in substance about as follows: "Brother Stuart, there 
is the picture of the best father God ever gave a fam- 
ily. Many a time he has taken me to his secret place 
of prayer, put his hand on my head, and prayed for 
his boy. And at every turn of my life, since he has 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME. 81 

left me, I have felt the pressure of his hand on my 
head, and have seen the tears upon his face, and have 
heard the prayers from his trembling lips. I have 
not been as good a man since his death as I ought to 
have been, but I stand up here to-day to tell you and 
my brothers and sisters and my dear old mother that 
I am going to live a better life from this hour until I 
die. I will start my family altar again, and come 
back to father's life." 

Overcome with emotion, he took his seat, and the 
children in order spoke on the same line. Each one 
referred to the place of secret prayer and the father's 
hand upon the head. At last we came to the young- 
est boy, who, with his face buried in his hands, was 
sobbing, and refused to speak. The preacher brother 
very pathetically said: "Buddy, say a word; there is 
no one here but the family, and it will help you." 

He arose, holding to the back of his chair, and 
looked upon me and said: "Brother Stuart, they tell 
me that you have come to dedicate this home to God ; 
but my dear old mother there has never let it get 
half an inch from God. They tell you that this meet- 
ing is called that my brothers and sisters may re- 
dedicate their lives to God, but they are good. I 
know them. I am the only black sheep in this flock. 
6 



82 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

Every step I have wandered away from God and the 
life of my precious father, I have felt his hand upon 
my head and heard his blessed words of prayer. To- 
day I come back to God, back to my father's life, and 
so help me God, I will never wander away again." 

Following his talk came a burst of sobbing and 
shouting, and I started that old hymn, "Amazing 
grace (how sweet the sound !) that saved a wretch 
like me !" etc., and we had an old-fashioned Methodist 
class-meeting, winding up with a shout. As I walked 
away from that old homestead I said in my heart : "It 
is the salt of a good life that saves the children." A 
boy never gets over the fact that he had a good father. 

Fathers and mothers, hear me to-night. Little 
children are looking up into your faces, asking which 
way to go. They are following your footsteps. Do 
not lead them wrong. God help you, stop to-night. 
Gather your little ones into your arms, and turn your 
back on sin and your face toward God. While we 
sing, come and kneel at this altar and give your hearts 
to God, that you and your children may be saved. 



SERMON ON "STRONG WOMANHOOD." 

The Toledo Evening News comments on it as fol- 
lows: 

"Before an audience that completely filled the 
Armory yesterday afternoon Eev. George Stuart, the 
co-laborer of Sam Jones, preached one of the might- 
iest and yet tenderest sermons that Toledo has ever 
heard. He talked on the power of a virtuous woman 
and the words he spoke can never be forgotten. He 
pictured the tremendous power a virtuous woman 
exerts, but there was also the picture of the fallen 
woman which was a masterly stroke of eloquence. It 
is doubtful if Sam Jones himself could have held the 
audience better than did George Stuart." 

The Commercial spoke of it as follows : 

"Eev. George R. Stuart, the co-laborer of Sam 
Jones, in the afternoon meeting at the Armory yes- 
terday preached one of the most remarkable sermons 
ever delivered in the city. Taking for his text the 
words of Solomon on the virtues of women, he told 
with great force the high honor in which she has been 

83 



84 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

held from the very beginning of the world until the 

present day." 

The Sermon. 

Text, Proverbs xxxi: 10, "Who can find a virtuous 
woman? For her price is far above rubies." 

The author of my text has much to say about 
woman. ~No one has a better right to speak about 
woman than Solomon. The average man learns 
much from one wife, but Solomon had 700. "He 
had wives of the Moabities, Ammonites, Edomites, 
Zidonians and Hittites." (I Kings xi: 1.) The 
text puts a very high valuation upon the virtuous 
woman. The word "virtue" has a history. It has 
changed its meaning several times in its history. In 
one age of the world the word stood for courage. 
That was a virtuous character who took the sword 
and stood in the first line of battle. It is used in 
this sense by St. Peter when he says, "Add to your 
faith, virtue." In another age of the world it meant 
honesty. That was 

A Virtuous Character 

who was upright, downright honest. In this age of 
the world it means purity or chastity. In every age 
of the world the word "virtue" has stood for the high- 



85 

est element of character, it has stood for the element 
of greatest strength. My text could properly be 
read, "who can find a strong woman? For her price 
is far above rabies." The raby is one of the most 
precious of all gems, one of the most precious things 
of its size upon earth. At the time of the text, re- 
garded by some even more precious than the diamond 
itself. Here then is my text, "Who can find a strong 
woman? For when you have found her, you have 
found the best thing of her size upon the earth." A 
good woman is the best thing this side of heaven; a 
bad woman is the worst thing this side of the pit. A 
woman touches the limit both ways; she rises higher, 
and falls lower, than man. The most degraded hu- 
man being on earth to-day is woman ; the purest char- 
acter on earth to-day is woman. Woman blesses or 
curses everything she touches. 

Incipient Rome 

rotted for want of women; imperial Rome rotted on 
account of her fast women. The stage and the ball- 
room never cursed the world till woman cursed them. 
A town never falls below its worst woman; never 
rises higher than its best woman. The homes of 
your town are on a level with your women, and your 



86 SERMONS BY GEO. E. STUART. 

town is on a level with your homes. Nothing can 
hurt woman like sin, and nothing can destroy sin like 
woman. Christ and woman can save the world; the 
devil and woman can damn it. The devil attacked 
the world first through woman; the Redeemer of the 
world came as the seed of the woman. Woman 
seems to be the battle ground for all good and evil 
forces. The women of our country will settle the 
destiny of our country morally and religiously. ISTo 
wonder it is said "that the price of a strong woman 
is beyond the value of rubies." 

The Author oe My Text 

gives us a life-size portrait of this strong woman. It 
is an old-fashioned picture; a picture that will call up 
to many a noble boy the woman at home, he called 
her mother ; a picture that recalls to many a man the 
woman he delights to call his wife. It is not a pic- 
ture of the gay, thoughtless, fashionable society belle, 
sacrificing home, husband and children and all the 
blessings of home to the endless round of giddy social 
pleasures; but this picture is a picture of the strong 
woman. Look at it a moment. The first verse fol- 
lowing my text is this: "The heart of her husband 
doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need 



87 

of spoil." It is a sad day in any home when the hus- 
band cannot trust every look, every word, every act 
of his wife. The loss of confidence at this point 
means the wreck of home, wreck of character, wreck 
of life. What a coloring those four words ("safely 
trust in her") give to this picture. But the brush 
of the painter touches the canvas again: "She will 
do him good and not evil all the days of her life." 
She will go with him to good places; surround him 
with good circumstances; all of her words and deeds 
will minister good. She stands strong against the ap- 
peals from worldly amusement, from foolish extrav- 
agances. 

She Stands eor the Right 

and against the wrong; "to do him good and not 
evil." Again the brush touches the canvas. "She 
riseth also while it is yet night and giveth meat to her 
household, and a portion to her maidens." She is an 
early riser, a home organizer, a home systematizer. 
By the time the sun has made the morning gray with 
his light, she has given meat to her household and a 
portion to her maidens. Breakfast is over and every 
maid about the household is busy with her portion. 
Such a woman in the home gives system and order, 



88 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

promptness and dispatch, not only to all work of the 
house, but it becomes a part of her 

Character in the Home. 

It does not stop with a systematic household, but 
the system of such a home goes out to the shop, and 
to the office, and to the world. The brush touches 
the canvas again. "She considereth a field and buyeth 
it, and with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vine- 
yard." A wonderful figure of common sense. Many 
a home has been wrecked in fortune by an indiscreet 
and extravagant woman. Again the brush touches 
the canvas. "She perceiveth that her merchandise is 
good. Her candle goeth not out by night." A 
graphic figure of honesty and sincerity. How insin- 
cere, how full of shame, how full of deception, is the 
female character to-day. There sits a woman with the 
appearance of luxuriant hair falling in flowing bangs 
about her forehead, but I do not know whether it is 
confined to her head by nature, or pinned on by hair- 
pins. Over there sits a lady with beautiful rosy 
cheeks, but I don't know whether they came from a 
ruddy blood careering through her healthful system, 
or whether she got it out of a little box on the bu- 



SERMON ON STRONG WOMANHOOD." 89 

reau. There sits a lady with a set of beautiful ivory- 
looking 

Teeth, Snowy White, 

through her ruby lips. I don't know whether they 
rest in her gums or on her gums. A woman's hair, 
teeth, lips and cheeks are not more treacherous than 
her tongue. O, the insincerity of society's tongue. 
The insincere praise and flattery and condemnation. 
An honest woman — a sincere woman. It is safe to 
invest in her merchandise. It is safe to buy a candle 
from her. The brush touches the canvas again. 
"She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands 
hold a distaff." A beautiful figure of plain indus- 
try. The old proverb says that the "Idle brain is the 
devil's workshop." His tools are "idle hands" and 
"idle feet." I believe it is a crime to be idle, how- 
ever rich you may be. An idle woman will get into 
mischief. The curse of our age is the fact that our 
wealth and competency are rearing our girls in idle- 
ness and laziness. Industry is God's great preserving 
force, is God's great conserving force. It brings 
health to body and mind and soul. 
Industrious Woman. 
But the brush touches the canvas again. "She 
stretchest out her hands to the poor. She reaches 



90 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

forth her hands to the needy." She is a charitable 
woman. God put a gentle hand on a woman's wrist. 
No hand can give loving ministries in the sick-room 
like a woman's hand. No tread like to the soft tread 
of a woman in the sick-room. No voice so low and 
soft and sweet as a woman's. What an angel of 
mercy is a good woman in a sick-room! When the 
world is so full of sorrow, so full of sickness and dis- 
tress, what a pity that woman's voice and strength 
and energies should be wasted in foolish, frivolous, 
giddy pleasures. O woman, stretch out your hand 
to the poor and reach forth your hand to the needy. 
Again the brush touches the canvas. "She is not 
afraid of the snow for her household, for all of her 
household are clothed with scarlet." Nowhere can a 
mother's character be seen more beautifully than in 
the 

Clothing of Her Children. 

I have looked so often upon the children of the 
home and read of a mother's love and a mother's 
care in every little garment. I have gone into other 
homes and read in the hieroglyphics of the unkempt 
hair, the unbuttoned sleeve, ripped coat and the torn 
dress, the sad language : "Mother is not here." 



91 

I dropped in to see a sick family some years ago, 
and a little unwashed, unkempt lad stepped into the 
room. The old gentleman said: "Excuse this little 
boy; his mother is dead and his grandmother sick, 
and I am a poor hand to care for children. His ex- 
planation was unnecessary. I read in the little un- 
buttoned sleeve, waist detached from the pants, the 
unfastened collar and the dangling shoestrings, the 
saddest language ever revealed in the person of a lit- 
the child, "Mother is not here." How I love to see 

A Motherly Mother. 

But the brush touches the canvas again. "She 
maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is 
silk and purple." At the time my text was written, 
silk and purple were the most substantial articles of 
clothing, corresponding to our flannels and linsey of 
this day and time. • She was substantially dressed. 
She was neatly dressed. Many a woman has won her 
husband's love in her brightest gown and lost it in 
the shabby dress. It is hard to love through filth. 
But the brush touches the canvas again. "Her hus- 
band is known in the gates when he sitteth among the 
elders of the land." Not only strong and sub- 
stantially dressed herself, not only with her children 



92 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

strong and substantially dressed, about her, but her 
husband is known wherever he is seen. There is 
projectile force enough in this character to place her 
husband among the elders of the land. God only 
knows how many men have been elevated by their 
wives ; God only knows how many have been dragged 
down. But the most important touch of the brush 
is now to be made. "She openeth her mouth with 
wisdom. In her tongue is 

The Law of Kindness." 

The mouth of a woman is an important feature. 
So much has been said of a woman's mouth that I 
touch the subject with a degree of hesitation. I 
handle a woman's mouth like I handle a loaded pistol. 
You never know when it is going off. But here is 
a mouth that I like. This mouth works on a main- 
spring called wisdom. And it never moves 'til wis- 
dom moves it. "And in the tongue is the law of 
kindness." I have known many kind tongues; many 
women who said kind things sometimes; at other 
times could say very bitter things. Sometimes speak 
softly, sometimes speak harshly. Sometimes praise; 
sometimes criticise. Sometimes win you by gentle 
words; sometimes skin you with harsh ones. But in 



SERMON ON "STRONG WOMANHOOD." 93 

this tongue there is a law. The law is not on the 
tongue, nor around the tongue, but the law is in it, 
and every time this tongue moves it moves to the law, 
and that law is kindness. Unkindness has no control 
over this tongue. It has but one law, and that law 
is the law of kindness, and every word is a kind word. 
I love a kind tongue, kind to her husband, kind to 
the children, kind to her friends, and kind to her 
enemies. The law of kindness. Again the brush 

Touches the Canvas. 

"She looketh well to the ways of her household; 
and eateth not the bread of idleness." She indus- 
triously looks after her children. She knows where 
her children go, how long they stay, and what they 
do. It was not her girl you saw out on the street 
with that dude after midnight, the other night, re- 
turning from the opera. It was not her girl that you 
saw taking the moonlight buggy ride with that young 
man. It was not her girl that you saw encircled in 
the arms of that lecherous youth, whirling on the 
ball-room floor. It was not her boy you saw on the 
streets at night. It was not her boy you saw in the 
club-room at the card table. The curse of our land 
to-day is that our mothers do not look to the ways of 



94 SERMONS BY GTEO. R. STUART. 

their children. The picture is done. The next 
verses are the comments on the picture. "Her chil- 
dren rise up and call her blessed. Her husband also 
and he praiseth her." "Many daughters have done 
virtuously, but thou excellest them all." Ah, how 
could a boy refrain from praising a mother like that? 
How could a husband keep from praising a wife like 
that ? I am sometimes criticised for my frequent ref- 
erence to my mother and my wife, but he who has 
such a mother and such a wife as I cannot keep from 
speaking of them. "Her children rise up and call 
her blessed. Her husband also and 

He Praiseth Her." 

What a wonderful picture this. It is the very pic- 
ture of the strong woman. It is the picture of the 
woman who is a blessing to her home, a blessing to 
her children, a blessing to her husband and a blessing 
to the world. A picture of a strong woman. The 
author of this picture gives in the next verse of three 
lines a picture of the fashionable, worldly woman. 
Look at the picture a moment. Here it is: 'Tavor 
is deceitful and beauty is vain. But the woman that 
feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of 
the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise 



SERMON ON "STRONG WOMANHOOD." 95 

her in the gates." Two lines finish the picture of the 
worldly woman. 

"Grace and Beauty, 

her stock in trade." Her every thought circles and 
centers around her grace and beauty. The great 
painter makes this picture with one stroke of the 
brush, then turned back and took another woman in 
the words, "But the woman that feareth the Lord 
shall be praised." 

Let us go back to this picture of the strong woman. 
IsTo one ever took one look at a beautiful woman that 
did not desire to take a second. ]STo one ever came 
into contact with a beautiful character that did not 
(want) long in his heart to see that character again. 
We turn to a beautiful woman in the highest sense ; 
beautiful in character, beautiful in soul, beautiful in 
life, beautiful in the home, strong in her body. Amid 
the pale faces, shrunken cheeks and fragile forms that 
surround us on every side, it is a tonic to look at an 
absolutely healthy woman. Some time ago I said to 
a doctor: "Where are our healthy women; where are 

The Bound, Plump Faces, 

where are the roses on the cheeks; where are the 
dimpled cheeks, dimpled hands; where are the healthy 



96 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

women ?" He replied : "Stuart, Madame Fashion has 
ruined the lives and health of our women. She has 
stolen the rose from her cheek, the dimple from her 
chin, the sparkle from her eye, the plumpness from 
her figure. Our women have sacrificed the brightest 
and best things of womanhood to the frivolities of 
fashion." 

I speak this hour to an audience of 4,000 women. 
Possibly there are scarcely 200 absolutely healthy 
women among them all. These infirmities run back 
through three or four generations and many run back 
to the frivolities of fashion and society. I pray God 
that the day may soon come when the sensible woman- 
hood of this country will rise up and put down all 
these forms of dress that are not conducive to health 
and modesty. Strong in her life. Another look at 
the picture brings out another wonderfully attractive 
feature : Strong in her dress. I have not time to deal 
with the fashion-plates of the day. The truth is, I 
do not care so much how a woman dresses provided 
she dresses with an eye single to 

Health and Modesty. 

I do not care how big you may make your sleeves. 
I do not care so much how you make your collars, 



97 

just so you have collars. I like to see women dressed 
up — all the way up. It is queer that woman, upon 
whom modesty's blush has its natural home, should 
become the leader of immodesty. Women are more 
immodest than men. Did you ever stop five minutes 
and go to the bottom of the thought in which the 
decollette was born? Did it ever occur to you that 
she who wears a decollette is lacking in genuine mod- 
esty? I stopped in a city some time ago and met in 
the hotel parlors a lady who had been reared in my 
neighborhood and in modest circumstances, but had 
married rich and moved to the city. She was soon 
lost in the giddy rounds of social life. Her grown 
daughter had been turned over to society with all that 
that means. After expressing her surprise at meet- 
ing me in the city she asked me to wait for a few 
moments and see her daughter. 

Soon the elevator stopped, and an airy-fairy-like 
creature stepped off. I was introduced to her. She 
made her little conventional society bow, and in a 
very artistical way stretched out her little 

Kid Gloved Hand, 

but I was almost afraid to shake hands with her for 
fear that I would break her. The mother stood half 

7 



98 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

between a grin and a smile, looking upon her fairy 
little creature, fit for nothing in the world but to be 
slung around the ball-room by some dude, impatiently 
waiting for my comments, which I did not make. At 
last she asked her daughter to remove a little silk 
shawl thrown around her shoulder and show me her 
beautiful ball-room dress. When she removed her 
shawl I was very much embarrassed, for I thought 
she had made a mistake and taken off more than she 
intended to. But I soon saw from the complacent 
smile of the mother and the native brass of the girl 
that what they were pleased to call her beautiful ball- 
room dress consisted mostly of skirts. I speak candid 
when I say, that raised as I have been raised, it 
seemed to me that the proper thing for any modest 
man to do was to turn his back upon that scene and 
walk off from it. She was not rigged up for the eye 
of modesty. I don't blame sweet girls. There is 
not a sixteen-year-old girl in the land that has sense 
enough to take care of herself, and that is why God 
gave her a mother, but I do blame these mothers who 
thus expose their pure, sweet girls to the immoral 

gaze of the 

Average Young Man 

of this country. As I walk through the streets of 



your city and look upon the bill-board advertisements 
of your theaters and operas, as I stop to look at tjie 
costumes of the women and ask the honest question, 
"Why was that woman put in that picture just in that 
position and with that costume?" (and the inevitable 
answer must come to every candid honest man and 
woman) "the motive was bad." It is a bid for the 
worst thoughts, and its influence is not for the best. 
When I see on advertisements of tobacco and almost 
every other commodity of trade, the nude forms of 
women, my cheeks burn and my heart aches. But 
in answer to my criticism comes back the fact that 
no woman was ever pictured in a garb that she did 
not wear; and after all, the women of the land are re- 
sponsible for this fearful shocking nudity of the fe- 
male form flooding our towns, our theaters, our 
operas and our social gatherings. Has woman lost 
her modesty? Are we utterly given over to im- 
modesty? I pray you good women, to whom God 
Almighty has intrusted the rearing of sweet girls, 
call a halt to this infernal immodesty of dress. Lend 
not your girls to this school of lust. Give not the 
arms and neck and shoulders of your sweet girls to 
feed the passions of the voluptuous vultures that at- 

L.ofC. 



100 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

tend all these gatherings chiefly to feed upon the 
weaknesses and follies of our women. 

I Warn You, Young Women, 

study your costume a little. Ask why Madam Fash- 
ion would array you thus, and then in the strength 
of your pure modest womanhood, dare to have the 
courage to draw the line on old Madam Fashion 
where modesty stops and immodesty begins. A 
strong woman means a woman who makes some de- 
mands upon the opposite sex. A man has drawn a 
line for women — he has made demands upon her 
character, and whenever a woman crosses the line 
that man has drawn for her, or falls below the stand- 
ard man has erected for her, she is picked up on the 
cold iron shovel of ostracism and thrown out into the 
cold, heartless world, the devil puts his foot on her 
and she never rises. Oh, the fruitless efforts of the 
good people of this country to lift up fallen women ! 
Oh, the rigidness with which she is held to the de- 
mands that man makes for her purity and her up- 
rightness; but the women of this country make no 
demands upon the men. A young man, provided 
he has a hundred thousand dollars back of him, can 
wallow in the slums, debauch himself in the saloon, 






SERMON ON "STRONG WOMANHOOD." 101 

go to the "unnamable haunts of sin, until every ele- 
ment of his character is reeking in immorality, yet 
dressed in his elegant costume, with the breath of 
the richest perfume about his clothing, and he is re- 
ceived like a prince into the best homes of this conn- 
try, and is considered an honored escort for our 
brightest and purest young women. I say, down 
with such a custom. God grant that the day may 
speedily come when our girls will think as much of 
themselves as the boys think of themselves, when a 
girl will stand at her parlor door and demand of the 
young man who enters that as her company he shall 
be as clean in his life as the young man demands she 

shall be. 

In One of Our 

Tennessee homes there lived a bright, cultured young 
woman, who put a womanly premium upon her own 
life and her own society. A brilliant young lawyer 
was paying court at her shrine. He was young and 
bright and strictly moral, though not religious. He 
had won her love and gained her consent to her mar- 
riage. During the Christmas holidays, with a com- 
pany of his reckless companions, in an unusually 
hilarious moment, he was persuaded to take wine. 
Ignorant of the treacherous drink, he was soon in- 



102 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

toxicated, and to the delight of his envious compan- 
ions he was carried to his room drunk. The news 
was carried to his young lady friend, who retired to 
her room, buried her face in her hand, fought a bat- 
tle and gained a victory. Late in the evening of the 
next day this young man rang the door-bell at her 
father's residence. She saw him coming and told the 
servant girl she would answer the bell. She opened 
the door, and said to him : "I have heard of your last- 
night's conduct. You have taken my name and our 
relations into disgrace. You have shown your appre- 
ciation and your estimation of me. I cannot receive 
the attentions of a man who values so lightly his own 
character and mine. You may go back to your com- 
panions, and be my friend no longer. Our roads sep- 
arate here. 

Good-bye, Sir." 

She closed the door and walked back into the king- 
dom of her own home, with the feeling that she would 
not trust her life and happiness with a man who 
valued them no higher than the young man she had 
just turned from the door. If we had a few young 
women in this country who would put some valua- 
tion on their own character and their own person, and 
would make more demands of the opposite sex, the 



103 

young men of this country would soon purify their 
lives, elevate their characters and be worthy of our 
noble young womanhood, and there would be fewer 
ruined homes, crushed hearts and lives. We need 
young women strong in their demands on the opposite 
sex. Again, a strong woman must have a worthy 
ambition. I spent several years of my life in a 
female college. Young women came from what was 
recognized as the best homes of our country. And 
year after year I looked for young ladies with a real 
worthy ambition. The average school-girl from the 
average home has no ambition of her own but to be 
a pretty, graceful, airy young miss with two or three 
dudes contesting for her favors. How I have longed 
to see young girls with ambition to make a woman 
— a right, strong 

Cultured Woman. 

How many thoroughly educated women in this 
audience? How many women of broad culture? 
How many young women with an ambition to be 
anything more than a society belle? And, you know 
what it takes to be a belle, don't you? It takes a 
little brass and a tongue. I have said it all over this 
country that any young woman can be thoroughly 



104 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

educated who wishes to be, whatever may be her cir- 
cumstances in life. I said this of a Tennessee town, 
and after my talk a young girl called at the house 
where I was stopping and asked to see me. She said: 
"Sir, you made a proposition to-day which I desire to 
test. You said any young lady could secure an edu- 
cation if she wanted it. I have come for your rule." 
I saw from the strength of her eye, and the determina- 
tion pictured in her face, that she meant business. I 
said to her, "Make home folks with me for a little 
while and tell me your exact condition, that I may 
advise you. Has your father any property?" She 
replied, "No, sir, he is a poor renter." "Have you 
any brothers succeeding in business I" She replied, 
"I have but one, 

Who is a Poor Man." 

I said, "Have you any relatives who have any 
money?" She said, "None that I know of." I saw 
that I had a problem. I asked again, "Have you 
availed yourself of the privileges of the public 
school?" She replied, "I am glad to tell you, sir, 
that I have gone through the public school course, 
and have taken the highest grade every session." I 
said, then, "A girl who will take what she can get 



105 

will appreciate what you give her. I have a plan by 
which you can succeed. Will you take it?" She re- 
plied, "If it is honorable, I will." I said, "I will se- 
cure for you a school to teach in the country. You 
can board around among the people and save your 
board. Do work night and morning and make your- 
self useful. Don't spend a single dollar of your 
money. You can afford to wear a faded frock for 
a little while, in order that you may wear what you 
please for the future. You can afford to wear ah old 
hat for a little season, in order that you may wear 
what you please for all the future, and be a woman 
with a magnificent womanhood. 

She replied, "Get me the school, sir, and I will do 
as you say." I said to her, "When your school is out, 
write me at Centenary Female College, Cleveland, 
Tenn., and I will give you further advice." Early 
the next fall I received a letter stating that her school 
was out, she had not spent a dollar of her money, 

and that 

She Had Eighty Dollaes. 

I wrote her to bring her $80 and come to Centen- 
ary College. I met her at the train, introduced her 
to the faculty, and said to the treasurer, "Put my 
name opposite the name of this young lady, give her 



106 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

credit for her $80, furnish her such spending money 
as she is compelled to have, and charge up her bal- 
ance to me." She entered the college course and was 
soon prominent in her class, was soon prominent as 
the most worthy young lady of the school, exerted a 
sweet Christian influence everywhere. A few years 
passed, during which she taught in the summer and 
attended school in the fall and winter. At last the 
day for her graduation came. I saw from the record 
that she had won three of the gold medals and was 
the valedictorian of her class. As she stood on the 
platform on commencement day and read her vale- 
dictory, I saw the great audience moved. After her 
graduation she secured a position, refunded every dol- 
lar of the money, and to-day is one of 

The First Young Women 

of our country, exerting an influence in the social cir- 
cle, in church work, and in home life, and I never 
hear of her work that I do not say, "Thank God for 
a young girl that has ambition. Ambition to be 
somebody, ambition to attain something." 

Again. A strong woman must be strong in piety. 
I believe God gave a woman stronger religious en- 
dowment than He gave to man. I believe He gave 



107 

this endowment for a great purpose. The two lead- 
ing elements of our religion are faith and love. I be- 
lieve that a woman has naturally more faith and more 
love than man. She who was last at the Cross, and 
first at the Sepulcher, believes in the ultimate tri- 
umph of the right. If I should select the most strik- 
ing example of faith in the Bible I would not take 
Abraham, to whom God talked so long; but I would 
take the woman, who, pressing her way through the 
throng, touched the hem of the Saviour's garment 
with the tip of her finger. 

The Good Women 

of the church are always first to take up the work and 
last to lay it down. They rely with a hopefulness of 
ultimate triumph, where the heart of man fails him. 
Some time ago, after I had worked until my faith and 
patience had given out in trying to rescue the son of 
a widow, I at last made up my mind that the thing 
to do, since we could not save the boy, was to divert 
the mother's attention from him — turn her affections 
from him to her other loving and dutiful children. 
I visited her one day and suggested to her that, since 
the boy did not love her, and was tramping her heart 
beneath the iron heel of dissipation, that she turn to 



108 SERMONS Br GEO. R. STUART. 

her other children, who loved her, and let the reck- 
less boy go his way. 

She Leaped to Her Feet, 

looked at me like a lioness (infuriated), and said, 
"What do you mean, sir? Do you mean that since 
the world has turned against my boy, nobody loves 
him and everybody has turned the cold shoulder to 
him, to come and turn his mother's love from him? 
Sir, you will never do that. I love my precious boy 
and I will never give him up. And God will save 
him, and some day you will see, too." Staggered at 
her faith, I said mechanically, "I hope so," and 
turned away. But that mother's faith clung to God 
and to that wayward boy until I lived to see the boy 
when he was brightly converted to God, and became 
a joy and comfort to his mother. Thank God for a 
mother faith. How oft it has saved a wayward boy. 
How many a wife is to-day clinging on to God in the 
midst of the dark and gloomy life, for a Godless hus- 
band or a dissipated husband. For ten years he has 
gone the downward way; for ten years wife's faith 
and prayer followed him. Who ever heard of a 
man's faith and prayer following a wayward wife? 
The very moment she steps from the path of rectitude 



109 

the husband rushes to the court house to get the 
devil's scissors, called a divorce, to separate him from 

The Wicked Woman. 

But there never comes a day in the life of a faith- 
ful wife that she does not follow the downward steps 
of her husband, crying in the loneliness of her cheer- 
less home, "Lord, save my husband." A woman's 
faith — there is no end to it. I need not argue the 
fact that woman has stronger love than man. There 
are examples in your own experience. 

Some years ago the only son of an indulgent home 
had received every blessing that a kind father and a 
loving mother could bestow. He had been educated 
at the best schools, and had received every luxury of 
life, but 

He Began to Drink. 

And through his years of dissipation he bled the 
hearts of his parents, and disgraced the home, spurned 
every loving advice and walked roughshod over them. 
At last the father, exasperated and discouraged, said 
to his wife, "I have done everything that an indulgent 
father could do. The wayward boy has crushed all 
the feeling out of my heart. He shall not disgrace 
us any longer. He shall never enter this home 



110 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

again." Just then the staggering form of the boy 
was seen to enter the front gate. His father met 
him at the door, and with a stern voice and a firm 
hand he turned him around and said, "Get off these 
premises, and never come here again." But the 
mother ran to him and threw her arms around his 
neck and kissed his bloated lips and face, and said, 
"No, no, my precious boy. You shall never 

Leave This Home 

till mother leaves. You shall have a place in mother's 
room as long as mother has a place." With her arms 
around his neck she led him into the house, back into 
the dining-room, prepared a nice warm meal, ever 
and anon stooping to kiss his bloated face, talking and 
saying to him over and over again, "Mother loves you, 
my precious boy. You shall never leave this house 
until mother leaves." Oh, the love of a mother. 
How it has followed the wayward boy to the gates 
of hell. Oh, the love of a wife. How it has followed 
a wayward husband to the very depths of degrada- 
tion. Thank God for a woman's love. The highest, 
brightest, deepest emotion that ever engaged a hu- 
man heart. But why did God give a woman this en- 
dowment of faith and love? The whole world starts 



Ill 

at mother's feet. Every little child plays on mother's 
slippers, puts his arm around mother's neck, and 
drinks from mother's heart and life, her faith and 
love. God desired to give the old world a good start, 
and knowing a mother's love to be the fountain of 
all love, richly endowed her with faith and love, so 
that she might put it down into the infant's heart 
and life. 

How I remember the first sweet lessons of love and 
faith I learned from my precious mother. How glad 
I am that God gave to this old world the blessing of 
a Christian mother. How glad I am that He made 
woman's heart the great storehouse of love and faith 
from which every little infant may draw its rich sup- 
plies. Woman's faith and woman's love. What an 
endowment, what a responsibility. A woman who 
will take this high endowment bestowed upon her by 
the hand of God Himself, and turn them over to the 
use of the devil by the worldly, sinful living, com- 
mits a crime unequalled in 

The Great Dark 

catalogue of sin. I believe that the irreligious 
woman in Christian America is the greatest mon- 
strosity that our civilization produces. When we 



112 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

consider what Christianity has done for woman, what 
Christianity will do for woman; when we consider 
woman's endowments from her heavenly Father, 
woman's sphere and woman's work, and then 
think a woman turning her back upon God and 
surrendering herself to the devil, it is enough to 
make the devil himself shudder. A woman who 
does not love Christ and give Him room in her heart 
and home, displays the most inhuman ingratitude and 
the most unpardonable ignorance. Let me illustrate 
her ingratitude. 

Some years ago I received this incident from a lady 
with whom I boarded in a little Tennessee town. A 
fine looking gentleman stopped one day for dinner 
with us, and before we went in to dinner, the lady 
gave me the little following sketch of history. She 
said : "That young man's father lived adjoining farms 
to my father. They moved into the settlement about 
the same time, and registered Government lands. 
There was but one child in the home, and he was 
that one. His father and mother were hard-work- 
ing people and accumulated property. They edu- 
cated that young man 

For a Physician. 
Several years ago the father came to his dying bed, 



113 

the boy was off at college. The father sent for his 
lawyer to make his will, and he said to the lawyer: 
'It will take but a few sentences to write my will. 
Give everything to my wife. She has helped me 
make it.' The wife interposed, saying, 'No, husband, 
I will not be here long myself, and you know we want 
our son to have this property. Let the lawyer make 
it out to him, and what few days I remain I will en- 
joy it with him/ and thus the entire estate was, by 
the will of the father, given to the young man. 

"After His Graduation 

he married a young fashionable woman and brought 
her to the old home place. He renovated and mod- 
ernized the old home against the protests of the 
mother, who was attached to everything about the 
place. She was given a retired room in the house, 
with orders to keep her mouth out of the affairs of 
the household, and to have nothing to do with any- 
thing. It was not long until this young wife be- 
came restive under suggestions of this economical old 
mother. She, who had worked so hard to accumulate 
the property, did not wish to see it wasted. Finally 
the test came. The young wife said to her husband : 
'Either I or your old mother must leave.' And the 
8 



114 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

son drove the old mother from the home." The lady 
said, "I remember the day when she came over to my 
father's house, stating that she had been driven out 
of her home. I saw the old woman weep, and I 
thought of the heartless wretch that could do a thing 
like that. The old woman died in our home, and was 
buried, and that young man enjoyed the estate that 
they had accumulated." When I sat down at the 
dinner table with that young man, I felt like stamp- 
ing him through the floor. I could hardly conceive 
how a man could be such a villainous ingrate as to 
take all these blessings at the hands of his father and 
mother, and then stand on the very steps of the home 
that his mother had given him and 

Drive Her Off. 

Oh, the ingrate ! It makes my blood fairly boil to 
think of it. But woman, will you hear the parallel? 
I heard, a short time ago, a man who had traveled the 
world over, say he would defy any one to produce a 
single square mile on the face of this earth where 
Jesus Christ had not been preached, and woman was 
not an abject slave. Christ came to enslaved woman, 
and with His own hands He wrought out for her her 
beautiful Christian home, and sealed the deed to it 



115 

with drops of blood from His own dying body. There 
is not a woman in this great audience who is queen 
of a beautiful home in this Christian land to-day, that 
does not possess it as a gift of the blood and suffering 
of the Lord Jesus Christ; and if she then stands on 
the marble steps of her beautiful home and drives her 
precious Saviour from that home and receives the 
card table and the dance and worldliness and sin, is 
ten thousand times more an ingrate than the man who 
drove his precious mother from the home. Oh, wo- 
man, to whom every blessing is a gift from the bleed- 
ing hands of the precious Christ, throw wide your 
door, and let the blessed Master in, and drive out of 
your home every influence that would hurt the 
Saviour. But not only is the woman an ingrate who 
is not a Christian, but she is ignorant of her own 
happiness. !N"o sorrow ever came to a woman that 
sin did not bring. Go through the homes of this land 
to-day, go through the hearts of the women of this 
land, and their ruined homes and ruined hearts is the 
work of sin. And the 

Devil Barely Captures 

a woman that he does not make her his perpetual 
slave. How little we think of the blessings of Chris- 



116 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

tianity, and of our homes and of our life. Some 
years ago a father stepped from his own door on his 
way to a temperance meeting in the streets of his 
town. A beautiful young girl kissed him good-night. 
She said: "Papa, where are going?" He replied, "I 
am going out to save some of our boys." And with 
a careless smile she said, "Save me a nice one." He 
walked off the steps, saying in his heart, that precious 
child is not conscious of the request she has made. 
Save my precious innocent child from a drunken hus- 
band and a drunken home. That night, as he stood 
on the street and made his speech, a young man, 
passing the crowd, stopped and heard half a dozen 
sentences of the speaker, one of which was this: 
"Young man, hear the advice of an old man. You 
may carry strong drink for a little while, but sooner 
or later it will get you down." The young man 
moved on, saying to himself that old man has 

Told the Truth. 

I was intoxicated the other night and I never ex- 
pected to get under the influence of liquor. I had 
better quit. Stopping there, silently and alone, he 
brought his face down into the palm of his hand, and 
said: "So help me God, I am done." Years passed 






117 

away. The cashier of a bank was seated with his 
wife on the front porch of their beautiful city resi- 
dence. Two little children were running to and fro 
in the green grass of the beautiful front yard when a 
drunkard came staggering down the street, holding 
to the palings. The young wife said: "Oh, Charley, 
what would I do if you should come staggering home 
drunk like that some day?" He replied, "Annie, I 
believe I never told you what made me give up 
drink." And he recalled to her the incident of the 
young man who had heard the old man make his 
temperance speech. It was Annie's father that made 
the talk and Annie's husband that heard it, and the 
night she looked up into her father's face and said, 
"Save me one," little did she think that at that hour 
would be the hour in her father's life that would 
bring her a happy, temperate home. Ah, no woman 
knows where sin will cross her path. 

No Woman Knows 

where Christianity will bless her life. But remem- 
ber this, that nothing but Christianity can help you 
and nothing but sin can hurt you. And a woman 
who turns Christ from her heart and home and life 
is ignorant of her own happiness. She displays the 



118 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

greatest weakness of her sex, but she who received 
Christ into her heart and home and her life, receives 
the strength that towers above all other elements of 
strength. Truly, a strong woman is one that f eareth 
the Lord. A woman who is strong in body, strong 
in dress, strong in her demands on the opposite sex, 
strong in her ambition, strong in her piety, becomes 
the strong woman whom her children shall call blessed, 
and whom her husband shall praise. It is this woman 
who will stand in society as a great tower of strength, 
whose influence will sweeten the lives of all about 
her. A woman whose hand is stretched out to the 
needy will make this sorrowing world smile. A 
woman with her hand stretched out to the poor and 
helpless, a woman in whom the husband can safely 
trust, and in whom the children have a mother, the 
influence of whose life shall share their destiny. 

The most hopeless boy I ever met in all my work 
is the boy without a mother. The poor fellow, who 
receiving the sentence, when asked if he knew any 
reason why sentence should not be passed upon him, 
drooped his head as 

The Tears Flowed Down 
his cheek, said: 

"Oh, Judge, if I had had a mother. If I had had 



119 

a mother. If I had had a mother." In all the 
wrecks of human character that we have found along 
our pathway no sadder one have we ever found than 
that poor man who says my home is wrecked. Some 
years ago, in a neat little cottage in a Southern city 
lived an honest, faithful laboring man. A railro'ad 
man. He had two sweet little children, and as he 
thought, a noble wife-. His little home was happy; 
he was contented, and his bank account was con- 
stantly increasing. One day some one whispered in 
his ear something about his home. He said: "It is 
a lie. My wife is as pure as an angel." But again 
a friend whispered in his ear, and another. Return- 
ing to his little home at an unexpected hour one night, 
his grave suspicions were turned into awful facts. 

Mortified, Enraged, 

he was no longer the same man. One night he took 
that wife and those two sweet little children to the 
lake in one of our neighboring towns, tied weights to 
their necks, and pushed them off into the lake. I 
have seen him in the clear star-light night push the 
pleading little girl from his bosom, and looking upon 
her lips bubbling in the water, as he pushed them 
under, I have said: "Oh, what a demon. 



120 seemons by geo. e. stuaet. 

Oh, What a Demon." 

But I go back of that hour and see how sad the fact 
that made him the demon. The women of our coun- 
try make or ruin our homes. Many a young girl has 
led her precious brother out into influences that 
grabbed and doomed him. Many a wife has brought 
her own precious husband into circumstances that 
have ruined him and ruined the home. There is no 
sweeter picture on earth than a Christian home where 
a loving, faithful wife keeps the fire continually 
burning upon the altar, her little ones are taught the 
ways of truth, and where her husband, influenced by 
her sweet Christian character, is led to Christ, and 
the entire family singing and praying, journey to- 
ward the city of God. A Christian woman in the 
home almost settles the question. A Christian 
woman in society, a Christian woman in the world, 
thank God for a Christian woman. "Her price is 
far above rubies." 



LOYE YOUE ENEMIES. 

Matthew v: 44. My text is from Christ's wonder- 
ful Sermon on the Mount. The listening multitude 
heard their great Teacher speak as never man spake. 
Sentence after sentence, He states great fundamental 
truths. Here He gives a command that the world 
had never heard before. They had heard it had been 
said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." 
They had heard it said, "Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor and hate thy enemy;" but never before had they 
received the command to love their enemies. 

Many of His hearers had read in the old Mosaic 
doctrine, "If any mischief follow, then thou shalt 
give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand 
for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound 
for wound, stripe for stripe." Christ does not con- 
tradict the Mosaic law, but He gives to the world a 
higher law. 

A nation of people led from the worship of idols, 
ignorant of God and higher laws, unable to under- 
stand or appreciate the deeper diviner laws of the 
pure heart ; a hungering and thirsting after righteous- 

121 



122 SEEMONS BY GEO. E. STTTAET. 

ness, could be governed only by physical laws. Their 
life must be preserved by rigid laws, demanding life 
for life, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, but after 
years of education and discipline, God had led them 
out on the Mount, where they were able to hear and 
receive the truths of the Gospel. The light of the 
world is now come, and men seeing the light shall 
walk in the light as He is in the light. ~No longer 
governed by mere laws and commandments, but gov- 
erned from within by the regeneration, calling into 
being motives, desires and affections which govern 
the whole man. 

The very nature of this new heart is to be that of 
the great heart of God, "according as the divine 
power hath given unto us the things that pertain unto 
life and Godliness through the knowlege of Him 
Who hath called us to glory and virtue. Whereby 
are given unto us great and exceeding precious prom- 
ises, that by these ye might be partakers of the divine 
nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the 
world through lust." 

The very evidence of this passing out of a sinful 
nature into a divine nature is love. "We know that 
we have passed from death unto life because we love 
the brethren." "Beloved, let us love one another^ 



LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. 123 

for love is of God, and every one that loveth is born 
of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not, 
knoweth not God, for God is love." If I were to 
write my whole religion in one word, I should write 
the word "love." It was love that moved God to 
give His Son to die for us. It was love that moved 
Christ to surrender the glories of heaven and suffer 
the agony of Calvary. We know we have passed 
from death unto life because we love. "But whoso 
hath this world's goods and seeth his brother hath 
need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from 
him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" The 
whole law, then, is briefly stated in this, "Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart and with 
all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all 
thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself." Thus we 
see that love originated the plan of salvation. Love 
wrought it out on Calvary. Love is the evidence of 
it, and love is the practice of it. If a man loves God 
with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all 
his strength and with all his mind, then every other 
Christian duty will be easy and natural. He will 
then love humanity. "If a man say he loves God, 
and hateth his brother, he is a liar." "If he love not 
his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God 



124 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

whom he hath not seen?" "And this commandment 
have we from him that he who loveth God loveth his 
brother also." 

The secret of happiness, my brother, is to seek and 
find the regenerated heart that loves supremely God 
and mankind, and then do as you please. Life's work 
will then be a sweet service of love. This love is nec- 
essary to all Christian duty and privilege. "Without 
it we cannot properly worship God, therefore, "if thou 
bringest thy gift to the altar and there remember that 
thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy 
gift before the altar and go thy way; first be recon- 
ciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy 
gift." The heart that properly worships God must 
be at peace with God and all mankind. We cannot 
pray with hatred in our heart. In the Lord's Prayer 
He hath set a trap for every one who entertains the 
least malice or hatred toward any one. "Forgive us 
our debts as we forgive our debtors." "Forgive us 
our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed 
against us." If you don't truly and sincerely forgive 
all who have trespassed against you in any way, then 
instead of asking God's forgiveness you ask for the re- 
verse. You ask that He entertain for you the very 
feelings that you entertain for those who have tres- 



LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. • 125 

passed against you. Beware, my brother, how yon 
pray. Never take the Lord's Prayer on your lips un- 
til you are in love and charity with the whole world. 
Love is the great uniting element, sin is the great dis- 
integrating element. Sin separates man from God, 
his Father, and separates from his brother. Love 
brings man into harmony with all mankind. In the 
band of stringed instruments there is a key-note, and 
to this all the instruments are tuned. There is har- 
mony in music. An instrument out of tune is dis- 
cordant with itself, and with all of the other instru- 
ments. God is the great key-note of the universe, 
and God is love. "Everyone that loveth is born of 
God and knoweth God." 

I was in a home once where a string band was giv- 
ing the most beautiful music. Dinner was an- 
nounced, and while the musicians were at dinner the 
children tampered with the strings. When they took 
up their instruments after dinner, there was a horri- 
ble discord. The key-note was sounded, and all the 
instruments were brought back into harmony, and 
that same sweet music was possible again. There was 
a time in the happy days of Eden when man loved 
God, and there was music everywhere, but Satan 
touched the harp strings of the human soul, and 



126 9 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

threw it out of harmony with the world and with 
God, and sin's discord was sounded. Man was sepa- 
rated from his God, and the blood of Abel cried out 
from the earth, and the discords of sin have filled the 
earth in all ages. But Jesus Christ came on the 
earth, went up on Calvary, and struck the key-note. 
"As I have loved you, so love ye one another." And 
every heart brought into harmony with Jesus Christ 
is in harmony with the world and all mankind. The 
world is full of music when the heart is full of love. 

This command to love has several statements in 
the Bible. "Love one another." "Love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself." "Love your enemies." I have 
chosen a command apparently most difficult to obey. 
"Love your enemies." If you have ever done much 
in the world you have made enemies. Every loyal, 
aggressive Christian makes enemies. "Marvel not 
if the world hate you." Christ's enemies crucified 
Him. The enemies of the apostles and early disciples 
imprisoned, stoned, crucified and burned them. 
Who is my enemy? He may be the one who hates 
me or he may be the one who would, under the cover 
of night, set fire to my house, who would slip up be- 
hind me and pierce me with a dagger, who would 
"take from me that which naught enriches him, but 



LOYE YOUR ENEMIES. 127 

makes me poor indeed." He may be that man who 
would do any and all manner of evil against me, and I 
am commanded to love him. !No commandment in all 
the Scripture has given me more trouble than this. I 
do not bother over the mysteries of the Bible. The 
plain commandments are the portions of Scripture 
that give me trouble. For years I tried to love my 
enemy with an impossible love. Love is a big word, 
and has many elements. Love is a compound emo- 
tion, and cannot be driven. Love is involuntary. It 
comes out from the heart like the light from the sun, 
like water from the fountain, like fragrance from a 
flower. The nature of the heart gives it birth, and 
sends it forth. 

How, then, shall I love my enemy? There are 
some elements of love which in the nature of the case 
may not be exercised toward an enemy. Take the ele- 
ment of esteem. I met you a few days ago. You were 
not prepossessing. I saw you as we walked down the 
street stop and administer to the wants of a beggar; 
a little farther on I saw you kindly assist an aged man 
over the rough street crossing; a little farther along 
I saw the sweetest sympathy manifested for a suf- 
fering man; at your home I saw the little ones 
clamor about your neck, and heard your kind words 



128 SEEMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

to wife and children. Finally I said, "I love that 
man." Why? Because great and noble traits of 
character manifesting themselves at every turn of 
your way demanded my love. Again I meet this 
other man. His manner is pleasing and prepossessing, 
and I am prepared to love him. But I see him turn 
his back upon a poor, deserving creature seeking alms. 
I see him jostle rudely out of his way an aged man. 
I see him turn his back upon half a dozen demands 
for sympathy and help. I overheard him stabbing 
the hearts of his wife and little ones with his cruel 
words. As I walked off of his door-step, I said, "I do 
not like that man. He is low and vicious. I can- 
not esteem him highly; I do not believe God wants 
me to." 

Again. There is a complacent element in love. I 
look upon a beautiful landscape, a lovely rose, a beau- 
tiful face, and I say I love flowers, I love beautiful 
landscapes, I love beautiful faces. Why? Because 
they please me. Some things are in their very na- 
ture pleasing; others in their very nature displeasing. 
I look upon a city sewer, a stagnant pond, and turn 
away in disgust. They are in their very nature dis- 
pleasing. I cannot help from loving beautiful 
flowers. I could not persuade myself to love a stag- 



LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. 129 

nant pond. I meet a man; love, gentleness, meek- 
ness and all the Christian virtues glow in all their 
beauty in his character. I am pleased with the 
character. I see another man, false, vicious, un- 
clean. I cannot help being pleased with the one. 
I cannot help being displeased with the other, and I 
express it by saying, I love that character; I do not 
love the other. 

There is another element of love, which we denomi- 
nate gratitude. I will illustrate it. There is a three- 
story house on fire. All the family have escaped, 
they think. But upon examination they find that lit- 
tle Bessie has been left behind. Her chubby little 
hands and arms are stretched from the upper window, 
and she screams for help. Every stairway is cut off 
by the flames, which are rapidly enveloping the whole 
building. The father, looking upon the scene, cries, 
"All that I have will I give for the rescue of that 
child I" The mother joins by shouting, "All ! All ! 
All for the rescue of my darling." 

Ladders are thrown against the building, but the 
brave men stand back. There is a little sailor boy in 
the crowd, who was accustomed to mounting masts 
and scaling ladders. Fearlessly he leaps upon the lad- 
der resting against the building, and up he goes until 
9 



130 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. " 

the flames from out the window fairly blister his body. 
Half way up the ladder he hesitates, he pauses. 
"Three cheers for the sailor boy," go up from the 
crowd, and he goes to the window, throws his arms 
around Bessie and rapidly descends the ladder, and 
falls fainting at the feet of the excited father and 
mother of the little girl. They alternate in their 
kisses upon the ruddy cheeks of little Bessie and the 
tanned cheeks of the sailor boy. They adopt him 
into their family as their own son, and through all 
the coming years they know not whether they love 
most the rescued or the rescuer. What is this ? It is 
gratitude. The warrior stops at the home gate, pats 
the withers of his dappled gray, and says, "Ho, fel- 
low, I love you." He has spanned ravines, he has 
leaped fences, created distances between him and the 
enemy, and saved his life in half a dozen cases, and 
brought him safe at last to his home gate. He loves 
the horse. It is the love of gratitude. 

Some years ago I was sitting in the large armchair 
by our home fireside. I had just recovered from a 
long spell of typhoid fever, through which my tire- 
less mother had sat almost constantly at my bedside. 
When they would say, "Mother, go to sleep," she 
would reply, "I cannot sleep." There are times when 



LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. 131 

the good mother does not get sleepy. When they 
would say, "Mother, eat," she would say, "I am not 
hungry." There are times when a good mother does 
not get hungry. But the crisis had come and past, 
and convalescent, I was sitting by the fire, while she 
sat carefully guarding, lest in my weakness I should 
faint and fall from my chair. As I turned and 
looked into her anxious face, so careworn, I saw upon 
her temples the first gray hairs I had ever noticed in 
her head. I said, "Mother, I did not know you were 
turning gray." She said, "I am not." I said, 
"There are gray hairs on your temple." Womanlike, 
she went to the mirror and looked into it. And then 
with a deep shadow upon her face, she said, "I had 
never noticed them before." Was it the long, anxious 
days and nights that she watched by my bedside that 
turned those hairs to silver? I think so. Anyway, 
when I return from my various trips, and look into 
her dear old face, and see those hairs glistening upon 
those temples I love my mother just like I love no- 
body else on God's green earth, and I am sure that 
God doesn't want me to love anybody like I love her. 
There are some kinds of love that cannot be exer- 
cised for every one. I am glad God doesn't say, 
"Love your neighbor like you love your wife." I 



132 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

could not have done it. I am so glad that God does 
not say, "Love your neighbor like you love your 
mother." I could not have done it. I am so 
glad that God doesn't say, "Love your neighbor 
like you love your children." I could not have 
done it. I am so glad that He doesn't say, "Love 
your neighbor like you love your best friend." 
I could not have done it. God never commands an 
impossible thing. God does not demand of me the 
love of esteem for every creature. God does not de- 
mand of me the love of complacency for every crea- 
ture. God does not demand of me that I love with 
the love of gratitude every creature. The love of es- 
teem is called forth by estimable qualities ; the love of 
complacency is called forth by pleasing objects. The 
love of gratitude is called forth by kind deeds. These 
elements of love are dependent upon things without 
me. But there is a love, the best love this old world 
ever knew. The love that God had when He gave 
His Son to die for me. The love that Christ had 
when He suffered on Calvary for me. The love that 
God demands of me toward every creature; it is the 
benevolent love. A wish-well love. The love that 
wishes everybody well, and wishes nobody harm. 
The love that when actively exercised "does unto 



LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. 133 

others as I would want them to do unto me." The 
love when properly exercised leads me to do no harm 
to any one, but all the good that I can to everyone. 
This love does not depend upon external objects, but 
goes gushing from a good heart like water from a 
fountain. Goes out from a good heart like fragrance 
from a rose. Goes from a good heart like light from 
the sun. It is the love that distinguishes the sinner 
from the Christian, the man of God from the man 
of the world. It is that love that when reviled "does 
not revile again." It is that love that "returns good 
for evil." It is that love that patiently wears the 
crown of thorns, and wipes the rude spittle from the 
face. It is that love that cries out from the storm of 
stones, "Father, forgive them." It is the love that 
bleeding and dying on Calvary, cries out, "Father, 
forgive them, for they know not what they do." It is 
the love which is the evidence of regeneration. I 
shall never forget the day when God, for Christ's sake 
pardoned my sins; when the Holy Ghost regener- 
ated me; when this love first took possession of my 
heart. The morning after my conversion I was 
working in the field with a heart as bright as the sun 
that shone overhead, and with a soul as happy as 
the birds that sang in the branches about me. As I 



134 SEEMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

looked toward the road, I saw riding along a neigh- 
bor boy with whom I had recently had a difficulty. I 
called to him to stop. I walked out to him, and with 
the hot tears upon my face, I said, "Henry, last night 
God saved me, I am happy in His love this morning. 
I do not hate anybody. I love everybody. "Won't 
you give me your hand and let us bury the past, and 
start up our friendship anew?" "What made me do 
that ? I was a new creature in Christ Jesus. A mis- 
sionary told me that during a season of prayer, when 
a number of heathen were at the altar seeking Christ, 
one arose to his feet, and with a smile over his face, 
looked him in the face. "Me lov yu." "Me lov 
yu." He then looked into the face of the native con- 
verts and said, "Me lov you." "Me lov yu." He 
then lifted up both hands and said, "Yes, yes, me love 
everybody. Me love those that don't love me." 
When God regenerates a human soul and plants the 
divine love in it, whether he be an American, a Chi- 
nese or an Indian, it is the same song of love. But if 
I love those that hate me and despitefully use me, 
where shall I seek redress of wrong? Shall I go 
through the world like a whipped spaniel, shrinking 
from all my enemies? No. The Gospel of Christ is 
the science of manhood. It never demands from 



LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. 135 

any man anything but the loftiest heroism and su- 
preme courage. I have a contempt for a pusillanim- 
ous coward. But thank God, a man don't have to be 
a rattlesnake striking at everything that stirs a leaf 
or moves a branch in his neighborhood. He does not 
have to be a bulldog to bite, a mule to kick, or a 
town bully to cut and shoot and cuss. The only per- 
fect man who ever walked this earth was Jesus Christ, 
our exemplar. He held the power of God in His right 
arm, and wiped the spittle of the enemy from His 
cheek. 

The fact that a man will shoot at the drop of a hat, 
will fight anybody upon the slightest provocation, is 
not proof of courage. It is often er the evidence of 
a brutish man. He who is closest to the brute values 
least a human life. He who is farthest from the 
brute values most a human life. He who sacrifices a 
human life to a human passion values human passion 
higher than he values human life. The fact that a 
man is quick to fight is often proof that he is more 
afraid of public opinion than he is of God. He 
values a human life lower than he values a human 
passion. There is a foolish sentiment, mainly nour- 
ished in the South, that every insult is to be met 
with a human life. If one man calls another a liar, 



136 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

he must pay for the insult with his blood. "No more 
foolish and debasing practice ever existed among men. 
If a man calls me a liar I am either a liar or I am not 
a liar. If I am a liar he simply states a fact which I 
ought to admit. If I am not a liar then he is a liar, 
and if I should undertake to fight every liar in the 
country I should have a government job on my hands. 
There is no philosophy, nor religion, nor good breed- 
ing in courting a personal difficulty with every ill-bred 
scamp who calls you a liar. A noble old Englishman 
of my town, every inch a gentleman, was sitting in 
his office one day, when a neighbor entered, having 
become offended at some business transaction. In 
the course of their conversation, he abruptly turned 
to the Englishman and said, "Sir, you are a liar." 
The Englishman calmly looked up into his face and 
said, "Sir, that is just your opinion expressed in your 
ill-breeding. I do not wish to continue a conversa- 
tion with a man so ill-bred as to talk that way in a 
gentleman's office." He turned to his desk and con- 
tinued his writing. 

When a man wishes to fight me, one of three things 
is true: I have done him a wrong, he conceives that 
I have done him a wrong, or he is ill-tempered. If I 
have done him a wrong, it is my business to kindly 



LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. 137 

and patiently rectify the wrong. If he conceives 
that I have done him the wrong, when I have not, it 
is my business either alone or with the assistance of 
others, to convince him of his error. If he is an ill- 
tempered fellow I should be charitable, to say the 
least of it, too manly to get into a personal difficulty 
with such a man; I should avoid him as I would avoid 
a vicious dog. 

A Christian man will accept an apology. A Chris- 
tian man will not carry malice. A bully who poses 
as a brave man is often the biggest coward. He is 
not afraid of death and is not afraid of personal vio- 
lence. In this he is like a Jersey brute or an ill- 
tempered cur. But he is afraid of public opinion. 
He is afraid of being called a coward. It takes more 
courage, often, to brook public opinion than to face a 
cannon. It takes more real courage to bear an insult 
than to resent it. When brought to the last analysis, 
nothing is so cowardly, so silly, so brutish, as fighting. 

A fight occurred among my neighbors once, in 
which the father was badly wounded. While the 
physicians were sewing up the wounds, I stood in the 
moonlight in the yard, with four of his sons. One of 
them said, "If my father dies, the other man must 
die." I said, "Hear me a few minutes. It is the 



138 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

mark of a good hunter not to waste his ammunition. 
If a man is loaded for deer, it would be very silly to 
shoot at a wren. The game is not worth the powder. 
It would be very foolish to shoot at a lizard, the 
game is not worth the load. Let us see what you load 
with and what your game will be worth when killed, 
before you shoot. You must load your gun with a 
long lawsuit. You must load your gun with the hap- 
piness of your wife and children. You must load 
your gun with a heavy expenditure of money. You 
must load your gun with the blood of your fellow- 
man. You must load your gun with a whole life of 
sorrow of his innocent wife and sweet children, who 
are in no way responsible. Put all these things into 
your gun and fire into your man, and when he lies 
dead at your feet, what is his dead body worth to you? 
If you say that his streaming blood and the wail of his 
wife and the screaming of his children will feed a 
passion in your bosom, I say that is a bad passion. 
If you say, "the man deserves death," there is a 
just God who will attend to that. If you say, 
"he deserves punishment," there are adequate 
civil laws to attend to that. "But," you may say, 
"where shall I seek revenge?" God hath said, 
"Vengeance is mine." It is utterly impossible to find 



LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. 139 

vengeance on earth. If you kill me, my oldest boy 
will kill you; your oldest son will kill him; the next 
relative on your side will kill on my side, and the next 
on my side will kill on your side, and let your bloody 
fight go on until the earth is baptized in blood and 
hell is peopled with suffering souls and yet vengeance 
is impossible. 

Here is a picture. Two young men are in partner- 
ship. They were married men and had happy fami- 
lies. For business considerations they dissolved part- 
nership. In the division of goods an altercation arose 
in which one called the other a liar. To satisfy the 
insult he jerked from his pocket a pistol, and sent a 
ball through the head of his former friend and part- 
ner. With a dull thud he fell to the floor and the 
murderer was in the hands of the officers. A few 
hours later the murderer was locked in the cold iron 
prison with his wife and children weeping and wailing 
on the outside. The wife of the other man, with her 
two little children, had just gone on a visit to her 
father. A telegram was sent. "Your husband was 
shot and killed this morning. Come home." On re- 
ceiving the telegram, a sad wail alarmed the neigh- 
bors, who gathered in to look in upon the most pitiful 
creature and to hear the most pitiful wails. Ever and 



140 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

anon the suffering woman would say, "Oh ! my happi- 
ness is ended! My happiness is ended!" And her 
sweet little children tugging at her dress, and crying 
piteously, "What is the matter, mamma? "What is 
the matter, mamma ?" received no answer but her sad 
wails. 

She dressed in mourning, and came on the evening 
train to the scene of the tragedy, and was taken to her 
home, which she had so recently left so full of joy 
and sunshine. As her feet touched the step she 
looked up at the little vine-covered cottage, and said, 
"Oh, you once sweet little home, you will never be 
home to me any more. You will never be home to 
me any more." If you call that revenge, God knows 
that I don't want it. I want no vengeance taken 
from the hearts and lives of innocent women and 
helpless children. Hear this, my brother, whenever 
you shoot into a man, I care not where you hit the 
man, you have hit some poor woman in the heart. 
Some mother's heart, some wife's heart or some sister's 
heart will carry the bullet to the grave. When you 
stab a man, I care not what part of his body your 
blade makes its incision, you stab some poor woman in 
the heart. There is no more cowardly and brutal act 
on earth than that which oppresses helpless women 



LOVE TOUR ENEMIES. 141 

and children. And he who pulls his pistol from his 
pocket, fires into his fellow-man, and consequently 
puts a bullet in the mother's, or wife's, or sister's 
heart, and crushes helpless women and children by 
his brutal act, may be called a brave man by the rab- 
ble who stand by and hear not the pitiful moans year 
after year that come from the wounded hearts of wife 
and mother and children, but I stand in my place to- 
day and say, that he who shoots down his fellow-man 
is a cowardly brute. 

Is it cowardly to suffer wrong for the innocent and 
helpless? Is it cowardly to suffer an insult from a 
brutal character? Is it cowardly to look with com- 
passion upon a man who would sacrifice a human life 
to a human passion? who thinks it is brave to fight? 
who thinks it manly to satisfy his passion with blood ? 
I thank God that the highest and truest and bravest 
manhood is on a different plane. 

Here is my idea of a brave man. A preacher stood 
on the streets of my town one Sabbath afternoon and 
preached to a promiscuous crowd that gathered about 
him. In the course of his sermon he said, "I would 
rather steal than sell liquor." Said he, "When I give 
a man liquor for his money I give him something 
worth less than nothing. There is not a father in all 



142 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

the land that would not prefer his son be robbed 
rather than his money exchanged for liquor. And 
then if I should steal a man's money, I would 
leave his person intact, his character intact, and it 
would not incapacitate him for taking care of him- 
self and making more money. But if I should sell 
him liquor I get his money for something that is 
worth less than nothing; I hurt his character, I hurt 
his wife, I hurt his little children, I hurt his business, 
and I incapacitate him for making more money." 
Said he, "I would rather steal. I would rather steal." 
The next day, walking down the street, a saloon- 
keeper accosted him, with the vilest oaths he assailed 
him. The preacher stood calmly and unmoved, and 
looking him straight in the eye, said, "I will have no 
personal altercation with you, sir. I fight a business, 
not a man." The saloonkeeper said, "If you pass by 
my door again I will stamp you into the earth." 
The preacher looked him square in the eye, and said, 
"I am going after my mail. This is my nearest way 
home. I shall be back here in fifteen minutes." He 
secured his mail and calmly and deliberately walked 
by the door as he had done before. The cowardly 
saloonkeeper stood in his door and looked upon a man 
who had the courage to speak his honest sentiments 



LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. 143 

and to walk in the plain path of duty, fearing none 
but God. He who kicks at every dog that barks at 
him will have a sprained knee, his breeches torn, or 
wear dob-slobbers half the time. He who fights at 
the barking dog is very little bigger than the dog 
that barks. God has fixed a higher and better law, 
the practical working of which will show the world 
that He who made man made the law. 

God's law is, "Recompense no man evil for evil." 
"Love your enemies." "Bless them that curse you." 
"Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them 
that despitefully use you and persecute you." And ye 
are commanded to do this that ye may be like your 
Father in Heaven, "who maketh the sun to shine 
upon the evil and the good, and sendeth the rain 
upon the just and upon the unjust." 

He who follows the laws of Christianity follows 
the highest laws; and he who lives a Christian life 
lives the manliest life. And the God who com- 
manded us to return good for evil fixed a law in the 
human heart by which this very act should heap coals 
of fire upon the enemy. God's law is, that when an 
enemy begins an aggressive course of wrong against 
us, turn to him a good heart, and it will become a 



144 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

sword wounding him in every thrust that he makes. 
I conclude with two illustrations. 

When I was at Emory and Henry College I heard 
a young man, whom I loved for his manliness and his 
gentleness, telling a joke at the expense of a young 
fellow who prided himself on his courage. He de- 
liberately walked up to him, and placing his fist close 
to his face said, "You are a liar." I saw the blush 
mantle the cheek of my friend. A tear came to his 
eye as he got the reins of his spirit, and with superb 
self-control, held himself a moment. "He who con- 
trolleth his spirit is greater than he who taketh a 
city." He looked the young man in the face, and 
said: "If you were a gentleman, sir, you would not 
act this way. Nothing short of a gentleman can in- 
sult me. If God will forgive your wickedness I 
ought to forgive your insolence, and I do." He 
turned and walked away to his room. I followed 
soon after. "We were sitting together in his room 
talking of how Christ bore the insults of the vicious, 
when there was a rap at the door. My friend said, 
"Come in." When it opened that same young man 
was at the door. The tears had swapped eyes. They 
had gotten over into his eyes. He said to my friend, 
"I did you a wrong to-day, and I have come to 



LOVE YOTJK EKEMIES. 145 

apologize." My friend, with a smile on his face, ex- 
tended his hand and said, "It is not necessary to 
apologize. It is all right. It is all right. Let it 
go." I saw that young man bury his face in his 
hands and weep like a child. My friend had whipped 
him as he could not have done with all the hickory 
withes in the woods. There is something, even in 
the foulest natures, that responds to a manly act. 

A little later a revival was started in the old col- 
lege chapel. My friend stepped back in the audience 
and put his arm around this young man, and invited 
him to be a Christian. His words moved the heart 
of the young man, and he followed him to the altar. 
What we need to capture this old world for Christ 
is a few first-class samples of Christianity. A few 
men who can teach this old world to love as our 
Saviour loved, and to suffer as our Saviour suffered. 

A Christian never has a finer opportunity to reveal 
Christ to the world than in a moment when he has 
been grossly insulted. In our Tennessee country, 
some years ago, two men were living on adjoining 
farms. A little creek divided their farms. On one 
side lived Mr. J., a Christian gentleman, and on the 
other side lived Mr. H., an ill-tempered sinner. It 
so happened that Mr. J.'s hogs got over the creek into 
10 



i46 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

Mr. H.'s fields. Mr. H. saw them, became enraged, 
took his dogs and hands and went down to the field 
and dogged the hogs nntil he had torn their ears and 
fearfully abused them. 

After he had thrown the last one over the fence 
into the lane, he started back home cursing. Mr. J. 
had stood on a little hill overlooking the creek bot- 
tom, and had witnessed the whole scene. He turned 
quietly and walked back home, saying to one of his 
hands, "I am sorry my neighbor allows himself to 
get into such a mood. The poor hogs were not to 
blame. I would not have treated his stock in that 
way." But it is easier to talk than to act. 

It is not long until the hogs of Mr. H. get over into 
the fields of Mr. J. He sees them tearing to pieces 
a beautiful meadow. Mr. H. sees them at the same 
time. Mr. J. calls his two grown sons, walks by the 
crib, puts a few handsful of corn in his pocket, and 
as they approach the hogs, he said to one of his sons, 
"Open the fence that leads into the lane/' and unto 
the other son he said, "Get around the hogs and drive 
them this way," at the same time taking a handful 
of the corn from his pocket, throwing it toward the 
hogs, began to say in a very kind tone, "Pig, pig, 
piguay." Mr. H. having seen Mr. J. coming toward 



LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. 14? 

the hogs and expecting his hogs to be treated as he 
had treated Mr. JVs, put his pistol into his pocket, 
and walked down toward the two men, concealing 
himself behind a large dead tree, and was stirring 
the muddy chaldron of his wicked old soul, talking 
to himself, and saying what he would do if his hogs 
were dogged. Mr. J. quietly led the hogs to the 
gap, and while his sons put up the fence he threw 
down the remaining handsful of corn to the hogs, re- 
marking to his sons "that his neighbor had some very 
fine hogs." Just as they started home Mr. H. stepped 
out from behind the tree and called, "Mr. J., stop 
there." Mr. J. stopped. He walked up to him and 
said, "I feel like lying down in this road, and letting 
you put your foot on my neck. I am not fit to be 
the neighbor of such a man as you are. If you will 
shake hands with such a man as I am, I want to 
promise you that I will make you a better neighbor, 
and I could not make you the neighbor I ought to 
make without the religion you have. And I want 
you to pray that I may be a Christian." Mr. J. said, 
"Why, neighbor, I have nothing against you. The 
Lord bless you, sir. I have been praying for you all 
these years, and shall continue to do so." It was 
but a short time until Mr. H. became a consistent 



148 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

member of the church, and a kind and accommodat- 
ing neighbor. 

Brethren, let us teach this old world what Chris- 
tianity is by giving to it some living examples. Here 
is a picture. 

See that lion coming. Hear him roar. He fairly 
shakes the hills. A little child has escaped from the 
caravan, and a little lamb has wandered from the 
fold. They are in the track of the great old lion. 
See ! See ! he approaches the little lamb, with his 
great paw strikes it to the earth, and devours it. See 
how he approaches the little child, strikes it to the 
earth with his great paw, tears limb from limb and 
devours it. Look at his fiery eye. Hear his awful 
roar. See his bloody teeth. What is that? That 
is a picture of human life following the laws of hu- 
man nature. See that old lion. He comes again. 
He is the same old lion, in many respects, but we 
hear no horrible roar. His eyes look as gentle as old 
Rovers, and he walks as gentle as old Rover. See, 
in his shaggy mane are the fingers of a little child. 
Look, a little lamb walks by his side. See them 
come toward the gate. They have walked under the 
shadow of the tree. The old lion lies down lazily. 
See, the little child pillows its head upon its jagged 



LOVE YOUR ENEMIES. 149 

mane. The lamb lies down at his feet. What is 
that? That is a picture of human nature redeemed 
by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. "Where did 
I get that picture? I got it from this blessed old 
Bible. The old prophet looked down through the 
ages and saw the coming Christ, and he said in sub- 
stance, "The lion and the lamb shall lie down to- 
gether, and a little child shall lead them." Oh, 
beautiful, childlike Christianity, put thy gentle hand 
upon the shaggy mane of our human nature, and lead 
us into the green meadows and beside the still waters. 
Oh, thou blessed lamb, come thou and walk with 
us, and grant that we, redeemed from the domination 
of wicked tempers and passions, may walk the earth 
in peace and gentleness. 




THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER. 

Psalm xci: 3. "Surely lie shall deliver thee from 
the snare of the fowler." "Surely he," that is God, 
"will deliver thee," that is you, my brother, "from 
the snare of the fowler," that is the traps of the devil. 
I am so glad that the Gospel has been so thoroughly 
humanized. It comes so close to me, so close to you. 
I am so glad that Christ came in human flesh/ walked 
on human feet, did kind deeds with human hands, 
and spake His wonderful words with human tongue. 
I am glad He walked and talked and ate and slept 
with humanity. But Christ came no closer to the 
world than does this old Bible. In this book we 
have the truths of the Gospel illustrated by all con- 
ditions of human life, from the tent to the palace; in 
every walk of life, from the shepherd boy to the king; 
every object on which we look has been taken by the 
blessed book to illustrate some truth. 

"There is a lesson in each flower, 
A story in each stream and bower, 
On every herb on which we tread 
Are written words, which rightly read 
Will lead us from earth's fragrant sod, 
And up to holiness in God." f 

150 



THE S^ARE OF THE FOWLER. 151 

The author of my text is David, the ruddy-cheeked 
son of Jesse, and a natural-born poet. I read the 
whole book of Psalms through once to see what God 
was to David. I was charmed by his wonderful fig- 
ures. Hear him talk of his God. 

"The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my de- 
liverer." "My buckler, and the horn of my salva- 
tion, and my high tower." "The Lord is my stay." 
"The Lord is my light and the Lord is my strength." 
"He shall hide me in His pavilion; in the secret of 
His tabernacle shall He hide me." "He shall set me 
upon a rock." "When my father and my mother for- 
sake me, the Lord will take me up." "The Lord is 
my shield." "Thou art my fortress." "Thou art 
my hiding-place." "For God is my defense." "My 
refuge in the day of trouble." "Thou hast been a 
shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy. 
I will trust in the covert of thy wings." "Be thou 
my strong habitation." "The Lord is my shepherd." 
"Keep me as the apple of the eye." "Hide me in 
the shadow of thy wing." "How say ye to my soul, 
flee as a bird to the mountain." How wonderful are 
these pictures ! 

Again I have read to see what David thought of 
the devil, and he saw him through the same poetic 



152 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

eye. There is no more graphic picture of the devil 
anywhere than the one in my text. David repre- 
sents him as a bird-catcher, and represents you and 
me as the unwary, unthinking bird caught by the 
snare of the fowler. I have selected this familiar 
figure to-night that I might get close to you. When 
my Master spake to the people He gathered from the 
scenes about Him the figures that would bring Him 
closest to His audience. "When He talked to the 
shepherds He said, "I am the good shepherd, and My 
sheep know My voice." And every time a shepherd 
spoke to a sheep after that, the sheep, responding to 
the shepherd's voice, preached the Master's sermon. 
When He spake to the fishermen He said, "The 
Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a net that was cast 
into the sea, and gathered of every kind, which, when 
it was full, they drew to the shore and sat down, and 
gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad 
away." As the fishermen sat in little groups, by the 
sea, sorting their fishes, the fish preached the Mas- 
ter's sermon. When He talked to the farmer He 
said, "Behold a sower went forth to sow, and when 
he sowed some seeds fell by the wayside, and the 
fowls came and devoured them up. And some fell 
upon stony places, and some fell among thorns, and 



THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER. 153 

others fell into good ground. " As the farmer went 
forth sowing his seed, as it bounced from the hard 
beaten path, or rattled among the thistles, it preached 
the Master's sermon. "When He spake to the woman 
of busy household cares He said, "A little leaven 
leaveneth the whole lump." And the pone of bread 
in each woman's hand, preached the Master's sermon. 
He said, "Ye are the light of the world," and every 
rising sun preached the Master's sermon. He said, 
"Ye are a candle," and every taper preached. He 
said, "Ye are the salt," and every crystal of salt 
preached the Master's sermon. The Master touched 
the household and every-day scenes of life, and made 
them pregnant with His Gospel. And to-night, fol- 
lowing the example of my Master, I take from this 
blessed book a little picture, and I get close to you. 
I bring a few simple methods by which the bird- 
catcher catches birds. And if you will give me your 
attention, you will be surprised to see how much like 
a bird you have been, and how much like a bird- 
catcher the devil has been. 

The first method I take is that of the decoy. Did 
you ever lay under the covert of a river bank with a 
wooden duck, exactly resembling in paint, in shape, 
in color a living duck, resting upon the river? It 



154 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

moves as a duck moves, looking like a duck looks, 
acting as a duck acts. Did you never hear the 
whistle of the wild duck's wing in the air, and see 
them circle and circle about the wooden duck? At 
last, assuring themselves that all is safe, they alight 
with a splutter around the wooden duck; and did you 
never hear the bang, bang of the guns, and see the 
poor decoyed ducks bleeding and floundering upon 
the bosom of the water? I shall never forget my first 
duck hunt. I shall never forget the first time I ever 
saw a decoy, how like a duck it looked. It had a 
duck's wing; it had a duck's head; it had a duck's 
color, and even the glass eye made the decoy perfect. 
I never used a more effective instrument than a decoy 
for catching game. "Where is the devil's decoy, and 
how is he like a bird-catcher? The devil's decoy is 
the nominal church member with his ecclesiastical 
paint on, in outward appearance the very image of 
a Christian, and spiritually as dead as the old wooden 
duck. Never did the devil have a more effective 
agency than the nominal member of the church. I 
noticed that our decoy duck was completely under 
our control. We could tie it out on the pond; tie 
it out on the lake; tie it out on the river; tie it out 
on the swamp; and so of the devil's decoys, they are 



THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER. 155 

under his power. He sets them out in the theater; 
stands them out on the ball-room floor; sets them 
down at the card table ; stands them up by the saloon 
counter. They are in his power. I notice that our 
decoy was not afraid of anything. The voice of the 
hunter gave no alarm, while every living duck flut- 
tered and flew the decoy swam placidly upon the 
bosom of the water, and seemed to say, "I am safe 
everywhere. Nothing hurts me." There is no surer 
test of the decoy than this. And there is no surer 
test of the devil's decoy than to hear one say, "The 
dance does not hurt me." "The theater does not 
hurt me." "The card table does not hurt me." "A 
drink now and then does not hurt me." The only 
reason that they do not hurt you is that you are dead. 
And the devil simply uses your church membership, 
your perfunctory performances of Christian duty, and 
your outward likeness to the Christian, as a snare by 
which he may trap and bring to death unthinking 
Christians. If the record of the decoy duck in the 
hands of the hunter could be kept, and all the ducks 
destroyed through its agency piled around on some 
hunter's day, what an awful picture of distress there 
would be, of broken wing and broken leg, bleed- 
ing head ; ruined eye, and lost plumage. When, in 



156 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

the great judgment of God, the devil's decoys are 
gathered around them, ah, the gamblers, the drunk- 
ards, the licentious. These gamblers, my friend, 
were made at your gaming table; these debauched 
and ruined characters, my friend, were made in your 
dance hall; these licentious characters, all blackened 
with sin, were made as they sat with you in the dress 
circle, in the private boxes, or in the peanut gallery 
of the theater. These drunkards were made with 
wine from your table, punch from your beautiful 
bowl, and claret from your sparkling glasses. Oh, 
the record of the devil's decoys! Christ's greatest 
enemies were His professed friends who were untrue. 
And some of these friends are loudest in their profes- 
sions. They wear the biggest crosses on their per- 
son; they wear the longest faces at worship; they are 
often prominent in church societies, and sometimes 
head the list in benevolent giving. It is strange that 
Judas furnishes the only recorded example who 
kissed his Lord in public, and he was the only ex- 
ample who paraded his love for the poor, by his de- 
sire to take even the offerings of the Master to in- 
crease the funds for the poor. To-day there is not 
a species of sin whose counterpart is not in the church 
somewhere, I mean among church members. Too 



THE SNAKE OF THE FOWLER. 15? 

often our church societies, organized to help the poor 
and comfort the sick and do other eleemosynary work 
in the name of Christ, are used by the devil to intro- 
duce our young people to the most corrupt institu- 
tions. Young as I am in the Christian life, I have 
known church societies to have a dance, whose fees 
were to go into a church building. I have known 
a church to take the gates of a base ball park, the re- 
ceipts of the game to be applied to the church build- 
ing. I have known a church to raffle a silk quilt to 
procure funds for the Master's use. I have known 
the church to solicit the kiss from her maidens' lips 
to augment the treasury of the church. I have 
known the church to defraud the public by so-called 
oyster soup, ice cream and other articles offered for 
sale, which were but abominable cheats and frauds. 
Let us down with all this business, and when the 
church of our Christ needs money, let us give like 
loving children. How many there are like Judas of 
old, who would take the sweet incense from off the 
very person of Christ and sell it for funds for the 
church treasury. The church treasury is bigger than 
Christ. Let us take a picture. 

Here is a fourth-class saloon on a back street. In 
the back end of this saloon is a black, dirty pine 



158 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

table. On this pine table is a greasy deck of cards 
and a bottle of liquor, and a little pile of coin. 
Around this table sit four old gamblers wh.0' drink 
from the bottle, and gamble with the cards for the 
little pile of silver. 

Take another scene. An elegant so-called Chris- 
tian home, every member of the family have their 
names upon the church record. There are a series of 
beautiful carved oak tables. On each table lies a 
beautiful deck of silk cards, and around each table 
are gathered an elegantly-dressed company of people, 
three-fourths of whom are church members, some 
of them, possibly, officials in the church. On the 
center table stands a beautiful cut-glass vase, and 
they are playing progressive euchre for the vase. 
Take these two pictures, and look at them a moment. 
In the sight of God and the laws of our land the one 
is as much gambling as the other; both crowds should 
be arrested and brought before the courts, just like 
a nigger is arrested and brought before the courts for 
shooting craps. There was, a short time ago, on the 
bench in the city of Chattanooga, a Judge who had 
the courage to so instruct his Grand Jury. As I 
look upon these two pictures with my precious boy 
standing by my side, I speak the truth when I say I 



THE SNAKE OF TfiE EOWLER. i59 

fear the latter more than I fear the former. The 
former will never get my boy, nor will it ever get 
any ambitious boy or any of our boys from any of 
our better circles of life. That old saloon, that old 
table, that old greasy deck of cards, those old gam- 
blers, have nothing in them to captivate the boy or 
pull him from the paths of virtue. 

They would all have a tendency to drive him from 
the place of vice. But that elegant home, those 
beautiful tables, those silk cards, and that elegant 
group of polite society, the brilliant lights and the de- 
lightful music, will capture my boy and capture your 
boy. Our boys matriculate in the latter and grad- 
uate in the former. 

Take another picture. There is a big gilded saloon 
down on Main street. The music is going, the lights 
are bright, the glasses are rattling, and the laugh 
from the dissipating throng is ringing. Above the 
doors are the words, "Palace Saloon." Take another 
picture. It is a magnificent building, large parlors, 
easy chairs, reading tables, writing tables, periodicals 
and libraries. Young men, middle-aged men and old 
men are there. Church members, church officials are 
there. It is a social club. On one floor is a dance- 
hall; on another is the library and reading-room; on 



160 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

another floor are gaming-rooms; on another is a hand- 
some buffet where meats and drinks are served. 
This building is a social club. It could not have been 
built without church members; it cannot be main- 
tained without them. But standing again, with my 
boy beside me, I fear the latter more than I fear the 
former. My boy, your boy, will not go into the 
saloon, but he will follow the church man into the 
social club; he will matriculate in the club and grad- 
uate in the saloon. Take another picture. It is a 
public hall in the city. Brilliantly illuminated; the 
floors are waxed; the orchestra has been employed, 
and the dance starts at 9.30. It is a promiscuous ball. 
Whiskey is smelt upon the breath of every other man, 
and even the women have had their wine. Immodest 
dress, immodest positions, unholy passions. This is 
the public ball. Again. The building is a beautiful 
residence on Capitol avenue. The heads of the fam- 
ily are members of the church. Cards have been 
issued for the reception. Supper is over, the dining- 
room is cleared, the music starts at 10 o'clock, and 
the dance begins. It is a select party, a private 
dance, but it is a dance. Church members are danc- 
ing, church officials are looking on, but it is a dance. 
I stand again, with my precious daughter standing 



THE SNAKE OF THE EOWLEK. 161 

by my side, and say, I fear the former less than I 
fear the latter. Our daughters matriculate in our 
private dance and graduate in our public balls. And 
our public balls are but scenes of immodesty and pas- 
sion. Let us put all these worldly amusements to- 
gether, and I make one statement in reference to 
them all, "They either do good or harm. They pro- 
mote Christianity or worldliness; they gather with 
Christ or they scatter abroad; they are for Christ 
or against Christ." 

Take not the advice of the devil's decoys. Be not 
drawn into places of death by their example. In all 
these matters go to the Bible for truth and go to God 
in prayer. "Surely He shall deliver thee from the 
snare of the fowler." 

I take another method of the fowler. Standing 
on board of the deck of a steamer, as we left the 
shore, I saw a covey of long-winged graceful gulls 
following in the wake of the vessel, picking up and 
feeding upon such things as were thrown from the 
vessel. A gentleman, standing by, tied a bait to a 
long string and a little stick as a float, threw it 
around his head a few times, and then dashed it out 
into the water, and tied the end of the string to a 
post of the vessel. In a little while a long-winged 
11 



162 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

graceful gull new down and swallowed the bait. 
Lifting himself on his wing, again he started away, 
but the cord soon held him fast. The man pulled it 
in, and we saw the gull break its wings and dishevel 
his feathers against the vessel. At last he fell out 
on the restless waves, an easy prey for anything. I 
said, "Ah, I see where Mr. Webster got his word 
'gull.' " What is it to be gulled? You think you 
are going to get something and something gets you. 
How oft have I seen the devil's gull rope, how oft I 
have seen his bait. How oft I have seen the un- 
fortunate bird fastened by the cord he could not 
break. I have seen the young man take his first 
glass. I have watched the sparkle of his eye and the 
flush of his cheek. I have heard the music of his 
laugh. As he started off it did seem as if he had 
found a prize. But I have seen him again, with 
bleared eye and bloated face, and trembling form, 
ruined by drink. I have had him put his arms 
around my neck, and look piteously into my face and 
say, "Oh, George, if I could quit; if I could quit." 
The wing of his ambition was broken; the feathers 
of his pride disheveled. He had fallen out on the 
restless waves of time, an easy prey for anything. 
He had bit at the devil's gull rope. 



THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER. 163 

During my pastorate in the city of Chattanooga a 
young plasterer came to the city. Many a day, with 
his overalls and trowel, he had made his honest dol- 
lar, retired at night and slept the sleep of an hon- 
est man. He fell into bad company and began to 
play for fun, and then for funds. Finding money 
made at the gaming-table easier than with the trowel, 
he said, "Good-bye, overalls; good-bye, trowel; good- 
bye, honest toil." One Sabbath night, having for- 
gotten the laws of God and the laws of men, he sat 
in the upper room of a saloon gambling. A dispute 
arose. His opponent leaped to his feet, pulled his 
gun and fired on the poor plasterer, who fell back 
dead. I looked into his face the next morning; I 
looked at the gaping wounds, and I said, "Poor fel- 
low, you have bit at the devil's gull rope." Be hon- 
est, young man, be honest. Be sober, young man, be 
sober. 

In my schoolboy days, in one of our Tennessee 
towns, I formed the acquaintance of a boy who was 
doing the rough work in a dry goods store at a small 
salary. He had come in from an honest country 
home where he had been taught to love God and to 
do right.. He was ambitious. As he was packing 
goods in the rear room of the store one day, doing his 



164 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

work honestly and faithfully, he said, "George, I will 
be a partner in this store, some day." Our lives sep- 
arated. Years afterward I went back to that town. 
As I walked up to that store I saw my young friend's 
name linked with the name of the senior merchant. 
They were partners. We renewed our acquaintance. 
I spent the evening at his beautiful home. It was 
a model Christian home. After supper he said, 
"George, we have prayers early, so the little ones 
may not get sleepy before prayers." After family 
worship we went out into his beautiful yard and sat 
down in the moonlight on a rustic seat, for it was 
summer, and as I looked back at his home I laid my 
hand on his knee, and said, "I am glad to see you in 
this beautiful home. I am glad to find you a partner 
in that big dry goods store." He laid his hand on 
mine, a tear glistening in his manly eye, as he said, 
"Thank God, there is not a dirty shilling in that 
home, and we are happy in it." It takes an honest 
dollar to build a happy home. It takes an honest 
business to make a happy life. The eagle on an hon- 
est dollar turns to a nightingale, and sings to you in 
your restful moments. The eagle on the dishonest 
dollar turns to a vulture and gnaws at your conscience 



THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER. 165 

in your unoccupied moments. Let us take another 
method. 

Did you ever set a trap? I shall never forget the 
first trap I ever set. I had spent the night with a 
neighbor boy. We went early in the morning and 
set the trap for partridges. When we had adjusted 
the triggers, my companion said, "Wait, George, we 
must cover up this trap. There is not a bird in all 
the fields fool enough to go into the trap unless it is 
covered." We gathered weeds and stuff to cover all 
the timbers of the trap, and away we ran. At the 
appointed hour we visited our trap. As we reached the 
top of the hill, looking down into the hollow where 
we had set our trap, my companion said, excitedly, 
"It is down ! It is down ! It is down !" If you never 
saw your trap down, you don't know how a boy feels 
in such a race. When we reached the trap and 
pulled the grass away we cried in our mountain 
vernacular, "It's a pat-ridge! It's a pat-ridge! It's a 
pat-ridge!" Slipping his hand under the trap, he 
pulled out the bird with its broken wing, its scattered 
feathers and bleeding head. I looked upon the beau- 
tiful striped-headed bird, and saw the blood on its 
head, its broken wing, its disheveled feathers, and 
watched it looking nervously and piteously around, 



166 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

hoping to regain its freedom, and my boyish heart 
felt in mnte sympathy with the bird. In my heart 
I said, "I wish its wing were unbroken, its head un- 
marked, its feathers all right, and we could turn it 
loose and hear it buzz in the air once more." 

Ah, I have seen that bird since then. I have seen 
the broken wing and the bleeding head. I have seen 
that covered trap. The name was covered. I have 
read, "Parlor Saloon," "Palace Saloon," "Daisy Sa- 
loon" and "Shamrock Saloon." The parlor is the 
sweetest room of the home, where we meet and greet 
our friends and loved ones. The daisy is the sweet- 
est and most modest flower that blooms in the valley. 
The shamrock is the little three-leafed clover-like 
plant that grows on the Emerald Isle. It is the 
plant that St. Patrick plucked when he introduced 
Christianity. He held it up and said, "There are 
three persons in the Godhead, the Pather, Son and 
Holy Ghost." The three are one, the same in sub- 
stance and equal in power, and gave the Irish its first 
grip on the Trinity. No harm in the parlor saloon; 
no harm in the daisy saloon; no harm in the sham- 
rock saloon. Go in boys, go it. Look at the pic- 
tures on the wall. There is a picture of a beautiful 
woman standing in front of her elegant home, pluck- 



THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER. 16 7 

ing a Marshal Neal rose from the vine that clambers 
about her porch. Here and there are other innocent 
pictures clustered among the sporting pictures. Not 
a single picture of the drunkard's home, or a drunk- 
ard's family, or a drunken tragedy, or a drunkard's 
brawl. How I should like to hang the pictures in 
the saloons of this country. What a group of pic- 
tures the wreckage of the saloon would make. Why 
hang these pictures of domestic felicity in the saloon? 
When did the saloon ever make a woman smile? It 
has made her weep, from time immemorial. When 
did it ever place her in the yard of a beautiful home? 
It has turned her out homeless. When did it ever 
make her pluck a flower? She has gathered only 
from the thorns. How I should like to uncover these 
saloons. 

During our meeting in the city of Nashville, I said, 
"How I should like to uncover and to see one saloon 
uncovered." A friend of mine came to me, and said, 
"Come to me to-morrow morning, and I will show you 
a saloon uncovered." I went with him to the spot 
where he had displaced the saloon with a mission 
chapel. He said, "There is my lamp, look at it." 
On one side was, "Who hath sorrow? Who hath 
woe? Who hath redness of eyes?" etc. On another, 



168 SERMONS BY GEO. E. STUAET. 

'Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink." 
And so each side was figured with Scriptures of warn- 
ing. We walked in. The little chapel was covered 
with large water-color paintings, drawn life-size, upon 
the plastered wall. The first was a life-size picture 
of Sam Jones. I said, "Why, that picture?" He 
said, "That is the man that led me to Christ." In 
another picture the women were rolling barrels and 
demijohns out, while the angels were waving victory. 
I said, "What is that?" He replied, "That is the 
picture of the W. C. T. U. women rolling the in- 
fernal stuff out of the land, and Heaven rejoicing." 
Fight on, good women. Pray on, toil on. She who 
was accused of being the originator of sin has been 
the originator of every great reform movement. An- 
other picture on the wall was that of a man, laying 
sprawling on the floor, with the blood gushing from 
his heart. Above him stood a man with a bloody 
knife in his hand, with a demon's face. I said, 
""What is that, my friend?" He replied, "That is a 
tragedy that occurred in this saloon." And on we 
went through these awful pictures till we came to the 
last. It was a poor, ragged, forlorn-looking fellow 
with a great serpent coiled around him. I said, 
"What is that?" He replied, "That is the poor 



THE SNAKE OF THE FOWLER. 169 

drunkard in the coils of the awful serpent." "Ah," 
said I, "My friend, if every saloon in this country 
should have the real pictures of its work upon its 
walls, our young men would run from them." If I 
could uncover the saloons of this country I could de- 
prive them of their patronage. If I could go to the 
ball-room, with its gay laughter and music and bril- 
liant lights, and show to the young girls the hellish 
passions that rage, they would cover their faces in 
their hands and run to their mothers' arms for pro- 
tection. If I could go to the theater and uncover 
the sins and lives of the performers, and show things 
up like God sees them, I could depopulate the thea- 
ters of this country. The devil covers his traps. 
Brother, sister, if you would be delivered from the 
traps of the devil, keep close to the bleeding side of 
Christ. "He is able to deliver thee." The last 
method I take, briefly, is that of the net. 

In Tennessee we have a method of catching birds 
in nets. The net has a big end and a little end. It 
is so with all the devil's snares. There are long wings 
to the net extending on each side. Birds are driven 
in coveys. Only birds that go in coveys are netted. 
People go in coveys, so to speak. There are crowds 
of young people in this city that belong to the clubs, 



170 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

that belong to the dancing circles, and that belong 
to the gaming circles. They go in groups. They 
have a leader. There are groups of young people 
who hear my voice to-night; if we get the leader to 
become a Christian, he could lead the whole group 
with him, but the hardest work of my ministry has 
been to get into these circles, the social club circle, 
the social card circle. Did you eve** see a covey of 
birds going toward the net? Birds are caught on a 
rainy day, a drizzly day and a cloudy day. Many a 
company of young people have been started toward 
the net on a drizzly day. Many a boy has taken his 
first drink; many a one has played his first game of 
cards on such days. I have seen the bird when he 
was first touching the wing of the net, stop for a mo- 
ment and apparently look up, and I have thought I 
could hear him say, "The ground is still beneath my 
feet, and the sky is still above me. I can run and I 
can fly." But on he goes, until he is in the net, and 
I see him look again. "There is net above me, and 
net beneath me and net on every side of me, but," 
says he, "I will get out further along." And on he 
goes, until he flutters and falls in the little end of the 
net. I have seen a young man touching the wings 
of the net in his first drink. I have heard him say, 



THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER. 171 

"The sky is still above me, and the ground is still be- 
neath me. I can run and I can fly. I will not be- 
come a drunkard. I can quit." I have seen him 
when the net of habit was all about him. I have 
heard him say, "I will quit. I will get out further 
on." I have seen him lying in the meshes of the 
little end of the net, helpless. 

Brother, if the sky is still above you to-night, fly. 
If the ground is still beneath you, run. If you are 
not tied by the habits of drink, by the habit of gam- 
ing, by lustful habits, in God's name I bid you fly 
to-night. Lift yourself upon the wing of your will 
and flv to God. 




THE WORLD'S DID FOR A MAK 

Daniel i : 8. "But Daniel purposed in his heart that he 
would not defile himself with the portion of the King's 
meat, nor with the wine which he drank." 



It is not my purpose, at this hour, to preach a tem- 
perance sermon. I have selected this text from 
which to preach a sermon on "Christian Character." 
The text gives a moment in a great man's life; a mo- 
ment of decision; a moment upon which depended 
his after life. A few minutes have been all the time 
required for the destruction of many a character. It 
takes years to build a character, but only a few mo- 
ments to destroy it. 

Every life is made up of crises, made up of de- 
cisions as to right and wrong, the proper and improper 
course to take. The road of life forks every few 
steps. Where you are to-day, my brother, depends 
upon what road you took where it forked. My text 
puts a great man in the forks of a road, with simply 
the right calling him in one direction, and almost 
every premium offered for a human character calling 
him in the other. 

It is impossible to appreciate Daniel's actions with- 
172 



173 

out a knowledge of the precise circumstances under 
which he acted. Circumstances have much to do 
with our actions. 

Among the Judean hills was a walled city, the 
only city on the earth where the true Grod was wor- 
shiped and His ordinances observed. Here His pe- 
culiar people were gathered; here was their temple, 
and in this city their services. Far away, on a spur 
of tertiary rock, projecting over the plain of the 
Assyrian desert into the rich valley of the Mesopo- 
tamia rested another city, the greatest that the pride 
of man has ever built. A wall 300 feet high, 80 
feet broad, and from fifty to sixty miles long, sur- 
rounded this wonderful city, which seemed more like 
a civic empire than a city. Within this was the great 
palace of the king. It was like a city itself, seven 
miles around. On the walls of the palace were 
painted vast hunting scenes, and its gardens rose one 
above another like a succession of mountains. The 
most remarkable structure in the great city was the 
wonderful temple of Bel, which was supposed to have 
stood 600 feet in the air. "Neither Carnac, in Egyptian 
Thebes, Byzantine St. Sophia, nor Gothic Clugny, 
nor St. Peter's of Rome have reached the grandeur of 
this primeval sanctuary, casting its shadows far and 



174 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

wide over the city and plain." Within this wonder- 
ful city there was an ancient social literary splendor 
corresponding to the physical grandeur of the city. 
Magnificent cavalry, careering through the 'streets, 
"horses, chariots, horsemen in companies, long roll 
of officials clad in splendid costumes of scarlet, with 
their elaborate armor, buckler shields and helmets, 
their bows and quivers, judges, treasurers, counsel- 
lors." Under the walls of this great city ran the 
river Euphrates, which distributed itself in various 
directions, adding much to the wondrous beauty of 
the city. From out this wondrous city went its ruler 
with all his gorgeous army. Toward Jerusalem they 
go. They tear down its walls, they spoil its temple, 
capture its golden vessels, and select from this con- 
quered people the flower of the nation — bright young 
men and beautiful young women, the architects, 
musicians, artisans — and lead them as trophies of 
their victory toward Babylon. Look upon this com- 
pany of young Hebrews, the brightest and best of 
this wondrous people. See them as they stand on 
the Judean hill overlooking their ruined city; see the 
patriotic tear fall from their cheek, and hear them 
mumble, "Oh, Jerusalem, if I ever forget thee, may 
my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue 



175 

cleave to the roof of my mouth." See them again 
as they come into the valley of the Mesopotamia, and 
see the great temple erected to the heathen gods, lift- 
ing itself in the air from out of the heathen city of 
Babylon. See them as they approach this great wall, 
pass through her gates captives to a heathen nation. 
See this little group as it gathers on the banks of 
the Euphrates river. Watch the curious Babylon- 
ians gather to gaze upon them. Hear them shout at 
them, "Play for us on your instruments, sing for us 
a native song." See the tear upon their faces as the 
melancholy words fall from their quivering lips, 
"How shall we sing the songs of our God in a strange 
land?" Some one has described the loneliness of 
this little group "a slowly dying brand on a deserted 
hearth; or to a pelican, standing by a desolate pool, 
pensively leaning its bill against its breast; or to a 
moping owl haunting some desolate ruin, or to a soli- 
tary thrush, pouring forth its melancholy note on the 
house-top apart from its fellows, or to the ever-length- 
ening shadows of the evening, or to a blade of grass 
withered by the sun." 

Among this sad group of captives was the hero of 
my text. As he stands in this group of captives, his 
native city in ruins, among strangers, in a strange 



176 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STTTAET. 

city, with, a strange religion, how dark the future 
seems to look to him. In the midst of this gloom a 
bright day comes to Daniel. The message of the 
king comes to him, a message that he has been se- 
lected as a candidate for one of the officers of the 
king's court; as a candidate to become an inmate of 
the wonderful palace of the king. How this call 
must have thrilled him. As this wonderful position, 
so full of hope and light, so full of honor and glory 
opened up before him, how his ambitious young heart 
must have leaped with joy. See him as he steps up 
the marble steps of the palace, in the presence of 
which he had stood before as a slave. ]STow he walks 
up to become an officer of the palace. See him as 
he is conducted to his magnificent apartments in the 
palace. Watch the light upon his long saddened face 
as he takes in the gorgeous surroundings into which 
he has been called. Before he has properly adjusted 
himself to his surroundings the dinner hour of the 
king has arrived, and Daniel is presented with a por- 
tion of the king's dinner. The meat which he ate 
and the wine which he drank was set before him. 
Here Daniel meets the crisis of his life. This meat 
violates his religion. It is an unclean beast, it has 
been strangled, it has been offered to idols. The 



THE WORLD ? S BID FOB A MAN. Iff 

king's wine violates his religion. Daniel is in the 
palace as a candidate for office, to be accepted or re- 
jected later. The king's meat and the king's wine 
lie along the road of his acceptance. But to eat the 
meat and drink the wine violates the religion of his 
fathers. Here is where the road forks. As Daniel 
looks upon this violation of his religion, he looked 
also upon the glory and the honor awaiting him in 
the palace. He put his foot down — purposed in his 
heart, and expressed his purpose — maintained his pur- 
pose. He said, "I will not defile myself with the 
king's meat and the king's wine." My friend, many 
a time in your life you have come to this very point, 
where the right lay on one side, where the purple of 
office, the feast of royal society, the ease of the palace, 
the pleasures of high society, high social life, the 
wealth of office, the example of the great, lay on the 
other. Perhaps there was but little to call you from 
the side of the right, perhaps there was much; per- 
haps you have stood, perhaps you have not. Where 
you are to-night has been determined by what you 
did when you stood in the crisis of life. I do not be- 
lieve that there is any element of manhood or wo- 
manhood comparable to that which we express in the 
word "purpose." An everlasting, invincible deter- 
12 



178 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

urination to do or not to do. Of all the elements of 
character contributing to genuine manhood and bring- 
ing the greatest success in life, brain or brawn, luck 
or pluck, learning or genius, I believe that uncom- 
promising purpose, to be or not to be, to do or not to 
do, to have or not to have, is an element of character 
outweighing all the others. Never did the devil 
make a stronger bid than he makes for Daniel, and 
never did a young man make a nobler fight. Hear 
the devil's first proposition. Daniel, you are in a 
strange land, the walls of your native city are broken 
down, the temple is in ruins, no longer they worship 
at Jerusalem as aforetime, you stand under the great 
shadow of the heathen temple, surrounded by the 
pageantry of the heathen nation, you are invited as a 
courtier in a heathen palace, why hesitate on your re- 
ligion? Many a time, young man, has the devil made 
such a proposition to you, and doubtless many of 
you have listened to his weird argument far away 
from the home in which you were reared, and far 
from the old family altar at which you kneeled in 
boyhood; away from mother's eye and mother's 
voice, in a strange city, surrounded by strange 
companions, that have said, "Come on;" and you 
followed in the pleasures that violated your own 



the World *s bid fok a man. If 9 

Christian home, dishonored your mother and offended 
your God. Sometime ago I was in the city of New 
York. I was sitting in my room at the hotel when 
there was a nervous rap at my door. On opening 
the door I found an old Tennessee friend, a Methodist 
steward. He was delighted to see me, and said he 
was in New York purchasing goods. After a hurried 
greeting he said, "George, I was delighted when I 
saw your name upon the hotel register. I said to 
mj wife, who came with me to New York, 'there is 
not a man on earth that would enjoy a good theater 
more than George Stuart. I am going to get tickets 
for three to one of the best to-night, and have him 
go with us. He is not much known in New York 
city, and it need not be known at home that he ever 
went/ " I said, "My friend, there are four who will 
know me, and I have more respect for two of them, 
as far as I am concerned, than for all the people in 
the city of New York." "Who?" said he. I said, 
"You and your good wife will know me, and God 
and George Stuart will know me. I should not, for 
the world, have my Heavenly Father see me do a 
thing like that; I would not, for the world, have 
George Stuart see me do it; I never could respect him 
afterward." A man is never better at heart at home 



180 SEKMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

than he is away from home; a man who is not re- 
ligious everywhere, is not truly religions anywhere; 
a man who is dependent on persons and surroundings 
for his proper conduct, has no Christian character. 
A Christian character is as loyal in the dark as in 
the light, as loyal at home as abroad, as loyal when 
only the burning eye of God is upon him as when 
the searching critical gaze of all mankind is upon 
him. He is a Christian from principle, and not from 
fear of criticism or from policy. It is said that when 
James Harper, of the firm of Harper Brothers, left 
his old-fashioned home to go to the city of New York 
that his good old mother followed him to the wagon, 
for he went in a wagon, as did a great many other of 
IsTew York's great men. With her kiss still warm 
upon his lips, she said, "James Harper, you are going 
to a strange city. Remember, your mother's blood 
is in your veins, and don't you disgrace it." And it 
is said of him, in all his great career, he never forgot 
his mother; never forgot his mother's God. There 
are only two of the Ten Commandments that are spe- 
cifically emphasized. One is, "the one that commands 
our reverence for God, and the other our love and 
reverence for our parents." "Thou shalt not take the 
name of the Lord thy God in vain, for He will not 



181 

hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain." 
"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days 
may be long in the land thy God giveth thee." Find 
me a man who does not honor God, his father and 
mother, and I will find yon a character with nothing 
to build on. The bottom is out; the foundation is 
gone; but, as long as there is a sweet abiding love 
and reverence for father and mother and a reverence 
for the great God who made him, however vile the 
man may be, there is hope for him. Young man, 
where'er you go, however far you may get from 
the old home, and from father and mother and the 
old family altar, do not forget them; do not dishonor 
them; don't defile yourself with the things that vio- 
late the religion of your father and mother. Hear 
the devil's next bid for Daniel. 

Daniel, there is honor in this. This is the road 
that leads to the official rank in the palace. You can- 
not afford to hesitate when great political preferment 
is at stake. How many men have sold out their God, 
their father and mother, the honor of their old home 
and their own character, to be elected to some polit- 
ical office. Oh, the political intrigue of our age, the 
political corruption of our age; a great whirlpool, in 
which some of our brightest characters are plunged. 



182 SERMONS BY GEO. E. STUART. 

Many noble men have entered politics, but fewer 
aged politicians stand up by the law of their God, 
the law of their father and mother. "We have a few 
great statesmen who, like Gladstone, of England, and 
a few such names in America, have spurned the 
tricks of politics, executed their offices as a great trust 
from God, who stand among the honored. men of the 
earth, living or dead; but where is the great politician, 
according to the common acceptation of that term, 
who has not turned from the right for his own polit- 
ical good or glory? How we need statesmen like 
Daniel, like the man "who kept his station in the 
greatest of revolutions, reconciling policy and re- 
ligion, business and devotion, magnanimity and hu- 
mility, authority and affability, conversation and re- 
tirement, interest and integrity, Heaven and the 
court, the favor of God and the favor of the king." 
Thank God we have men still left among us who 
have the courage to refuse office gotten by intrigue 
and the honors bestowed by trickery, but some of 
our greedy old political hogs will take whatever slops 
their political henchmen pour into their trough. 
Would to God the manhood of America would rise up 
and consign them to an everlasting retirement. Any 
man who will take an office secured by bribery, will 



183 

take a bribe; any man who will take a bribe, ought 
to be made to take the pen. He who will buy a vote 
if you give him his price, will sell one; he who will 
sell a vote will sell a principle, for a vote represents 
a principle; he who will sell one principle will sell 
them all, and he who- will sell out his principles is 
an infamous scoundrel. If you want to know my 
opinion of a man who deals with the American ballot 
as with merchandise, put the first and last expressions 
in the above together, and you have it. 

It was a great bid the devil made when he spread 
out before captive Daniel the honors and the office 
of the king's court in the king's palace. But the 
devil makes another bid to Daniel. Daniel, it is 
customary for young men who are candidates for the 
king's court to eat of the king's meat and drink of 
the king's wine. Oh, the customs of the people. Oh, 
the chains of fashion. Where is there a man or wo- 
man who can stand up and go clear against the cus- 
toms of society? 

"We are unconscious of our fearful slavery to cus- 
tom. Custom makes a modest, pure girl feel at ease 
at the public reception under the burning gaze of 
lustful eyes, with her arms and shoulders and neck 
and chest exposed. If she were accidentally ex- 



184 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

posed, under any other circumstances, she would be 
shocked almost to nervous prostration. Custom 
makes some girls feel at ease in the arms of a com- 
parative stranger whirling on the ball-room floor, 
when, if the same position would be attempted in 
her private parlor, she would. scream. Custom takes 
decent people into the theater when the lewdest wo- 
men are often performers. If by mistake, these very 
parties should find themselves in a house with similar 
characters, they would run out like they were rush- 
ing from a burning building. Make anything cus- 
tom and it goes. Ah, I like to see a character stop ■ 
facing a custom that is bad, a custom that is wrong 
and a custom that corrupts; how I like to see a char- 
acter put the foot down and say, "No." Say it so 
that Heaven and hell and all the earth can hear it. 
"ISTo, it is wrong, and I will not do it. Though all 
of the royal line pursue this course, I will be captive 
in Babylon forever before I yield." Foolish social 
customs have wrecked many a character. 

A young man in a Massachusetts town some years 
ago, the son of a drunkard, displayed ambition and 
talent in a youths' debating club of his town. Some 
one said to him, "Henry, you ought to make a man 
of yourself." He replied, "I have no chance." 



185 

"But/' said this friend, "go join the Sons of Tem- 
perance, be sober yourself and make a man." He 
took the advice, he took the vows, and year by year 
he grew as a man. He was entrusted with a mes- 
sage to Mr. Adams at the Capitol of the United 
States. Mr. Adams, knowing of the young man, and 
from what he sprung, treated him with great con- 
sideration, and said to him, "I desire you shall meet 
some of the great men of your nation, and to-morrow 
you shall dine with me and with them." They were 
at the table, young Henry at the seat of honor, and 
a number of great men at the table. Wine was upon 
the table. Mr. Adams essayed to drink with young 
Henry. A blush manteled his cheek, and in a manly 
way he said, "Mr. Adams, you must excuse me, sir; I 
have a vow that prevents me taking wine." Mr. 
Adams sat his glass upon the table, and said, "There 
will be no wine drunk at this table to-day," and every 
glass was pushed to the center. Young Henry might 
have said, "It is not often that I am in a place like 
this. It is not often that I am thrown with the great 
men of my nation. I am but an humble fellow, I 
cannot set customs for these great men. I will fol- 
low them to-day. But no, however humble, however 
insignificant, however surrounded I may be, I do not 



186 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

propose to surrender my manhood or my character. 
I do not propose to let the custom of great men de- 
stroy my vow." He said, "No." He said it so that 
United States Congressmen heard it, the daily papers 
noticed it the next morning. He said it so that the 
whole world has heard it. In after years he himself 
became one of the greatest men of the nation, and 
sat down in the Vice-President's chair of the United 
States. And no cleaner or nobler character ever oc- 
cupied that chair than Henry Wilson, of Massa- 
chusetts. How I love the man who can stand in the 
face of a wrong custom, even among the great, and 
say, "No." 

During my last year at Emory and Henry College 
a strange preacher preached in the college chapel. 
"We were delighted with his sermon. It seemed to 
me a masterpiece. I inquired who he was, and 
learned that he was an old student of Emory and 
Henry College, and I sought more definite informa- 
tion. One of the old professors, who was his teacher 
in his schoolboy days, gave me this little incident. 

"That boy was the son of a widow," said he, "who 
lived a few miles from Emory and Henry College. 
For several years he was the bell-boy of the college, 
ringing the bell for his college expenses. His mother 



187 

sent his provisions from home, and he ate them in 
his room. Month after month he struggled along 
through difficulty, until he had completed his college 
course. The day of his graduation drew near. He 
visited the old home, and invited his mother to wit- 
ness his graduation. He was a contestant for the 
Eobertson Oratorical Medal, a contest which has been 
a feature of the college commencements at Emory 
and Henry for almost half a century. It had been 
the custom among the boys for the winner of this 
medal to present it to his best girl, which gave the 
medal an additional interest. The speeches for the 
prize were made on the day before the commence- 
ment. A great audience heard them. On the day 
of the commencement the diplomas and the medals 
were awarded. The old mother of the bellman was 
present, taking a humble seat at the rear of the great 
auditorium, clad in her homespun clothing and with 
her plain sunbonnet. She was there to see her boy 
graduate. When the graduation speeches had been 
made and the diplomas awarded, the last trial scene of 
the commencement had come, the hour for the award- 
ing of medals. When the moment came for the 
awarding of the Robertson prize, it was always 
awarded last, every one in the great pavilion was on 



188 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

the qui vive. The gentleman entrusted with the duty 
of awarding this medal walked on the platform with 
the beautiful gold medal dangling at the end of the 
ribbon, which hung on his forefinger. He made proper 
remarks about what vim and pluck and push could 
do, and at the conclusion of his speech said, If S. B. 
will come forward, I shall take pleasure in present- 
ing to him this medal which he has so faithfully won.' 
It was the bellman. He stepped forward, received 
the medal, and turned his face to the great audience. 
Every eye was upon him. They waited in breath- 
less silence to see what he would do with it. He 
walked down the long aisle to the last seat, slipped 
the blue ribbon over the sunbonnet, and said, 'Mother, 
you wear this. You are worthy of it, for without 
you I never could have won it.' " It was well in a 
moment like that for every one in that great pavilion 
to contribute a tear in honor of an act so brave, so 
noble, so appropriate. When I heard that, I said, 
"Thank God for a young man who, in the supreme 
moment like that, can knock a custom into a cocked 
hat, and do the right thing, not because custom says 
so, but because it is right." How many young men 
and young women over this country forget old 
mother, forget aged father, forget home, forget to 



189 

honor the loved ones at home, but how few forget to 
keep up with the little conventionalities of society. 
In keeping with custom a young man never forgets 
to lift his hat in the presence of a young lady, but 
often forgets to lift the burden from dear old mother's 
heart. He never fails to make a proper bow to a 
stranger, but he often fails to make a fire for mother. 
He never fails to give kind words in keeping with the 
little of social life, but how oft he forgets these same 
immunities at the home circle. I would not make 
your kind words less to the world, but I would have 
them of tener at home. I would not make your bows 
less frequent in polite society. I would not have you 
drop any of the immunities of polite society, but, if 
need be, I would have you break every law of com- 
mon courtesy if it were necessary to obey the laws 
of God, and honor your father and mother. 

Daniel did not forget Jerusalem. He did not for- 
get his father nor his mother. He did not forget 
God. He did not yield to the custom of the palace, 
though it were to eat the king's meat and to drink the 
king's wine. But the devil makes another strong bid 
for Daniel. 

Hear it. Daniel, all the rest eat the king's meat 
and drink the king's wine. You are the only one 



190 SEEMONS BY GEO. E. STtJAET. 

that refuses it. It is hard to turn from the multi- 
tude. It is hard to break the magic circle of com- 
panionship. It is hard to stop when others go on, 
and it is hard to go on when others stop. It is hard 
to stand alone anywhere. In my boyhood days I 
lived on a farm in Hawkins county. Adjoining the 
farm where I lived was a Presbyterian family, noble 
father, remarkable mother, and a large, interesting 
family of children. This mother died while we lived 
neighbors to the family. What an impression her 
good life made upon the community ! What an im- 
pression it made upon my tender boyhood ! She said 
to her sons, "Do not go into places where your pres- 
ence there would be a reproach on your mother." A 
few years ago, after almost a quarter of a century had 
passed since her death, I was stationed as pastor in 
the city of Chattanooga. A son of this good woman 
held a State office in the city. One of the highest 
officials of the State, with his political friends and 
this young man, were walking down the leading street 
in the city, when it was proposed to enter a saloon. 
They all turned in, but my friend stopped. He said, 
"Excuse me, gentlemen, I cannot go in." In the 
face of all their urgent pleas he simply said, "Excuse 
me, gentlemen, I cannot go in." He said to me after- 



191 

ward, "I never have gone, since my mother's death, 
into a place where my presence would be a reproach 
to her good name." How I like to see a man, though 
he has been twenty-five years away from his old 
home, though the gate in the yard fence is rotted 
down, though the farm is in the hands of another, 
though the ashes of father and mother are moulder- 
ing in the grave, how I love to see a young man stop 
and say, "Ko, I cannot go." Stop, if there be two; 
stop, if there be three; stop, if there be twenty, and 
say, "Go on." It takes a man to do that. 

Young man, hear this to-night. You can never 
climb to where God would have you stand until you 
learn to go alone. 

But the devil makes another bid for Daniel. Hear 
this bid. How subtle, how powerful, and how many 
thousands it has captured ! Daniel, there is money 
in it. You are a poor captive in a strange city, but 
as an officer of the palace of the king, the king's 
treasury is at your command to supply your wants 
and to furnish your luxuries. Your wardrobe comes 
from the king's treasury, your food comes down from 
the king's table. The financial question will be set- 
tled when you get to be officer of the king. One of 
the earliest lessons I learned from my old reader was 



192 SEEM0NS BY GEO. E. STUAET. 

the rustic proverb, "Money makes the mare go." Do 
you see these two silver dollars I hold in each of my 
hands ? "When I hold them out at arm's length from 
me they have little to do with my vision. I can see 
this brother here, I can see the Bible, and I can see 
my mother. But look again. When I bring them 
thus close to my eyes they shut off my vision. I can- 
not see the brother here, I cannot see the Bible, I 
cannot see my mother. I warn you, my brother, do 
not let the dollar get too close to you. The question 
of the business world to-day is not, "Is it right ?" but 
"Will it pay?" It is not, "Is it according to God's 
Word?" but "Is it profitable?" There are few things 
that are not sold for money to-day. A man who is 
swallowed up by his bank, or by his merchandise, or 
by office work, so that he cannot take time to have 
family prayers, or give proper religious instruction to 
his children, that man puts his little children on the 
block and sells them off for money. That man who 
cannot take time from his business to spend a quiet, 
social and religious hour with his wife at home, puts 
his wife on the block, and sells her off for money. 
That man who would run a building for unholy pur- 
poses or in unholy business, puts his character and 
his soul on the block and sells them off for money. 



193 

That man or woman who would pursue any unholy 
business of life for monetary considerations, puts his 
or her own soul on the block and barters it off for 
money. How few there are to-day who stand up flat- 
footed on God's "Word and absolutely refuse to en- 
gage in anything, however much money there is in 
it, which in the least violates God's command. How 
many men to-day have even a frivolous excuse for 
pursuing unholy business on the Sabbath day ? Busi- 
ness mail is read and considered, business conversa- 
tion and thoughts indulged in, drug stores, livery 
stables, ice markets, fruit stands, cigar stands — al- 
most every kind of traffic carried on, even by church 
members, on God's holy day with the frivolous and 
false excuse that it is a necessity. Preaching in a 
Tennessee city sometime ago, I said, "It is better to 
run a dray and sell meat and meal and flour and hay 
on God's holy day, than to open the drug store and 
sell tobacco and cigars and soda water. The former 
things are necessities, but the latter things are doubt- 
ful luxuries, and just as a necessity is better than a 
doubtful luxury on God's day, so the groceryman who 
sells meat and flour and meal and hay is better in his 
morals than he who opens the drug store and sells 
cigars and tobacco and soda water." As I said this 
13 



194 SERMONS BY GEO. E. STtJAET. 

a leading official in the Baptist church, heard it. He 
walked down to his drug store, and said to his clerks, 
"Hereafter there will be nothing sold in this drug 
store on Sunday except medicine on a prescription." 
I said again in the same sermon, "It is better to plow 
and reap and sow on God's day than to run the aver- 
age livery stable, for plowing and reaping and sow- 
ing are innocent and useful employments, but buggy 
driving, as conducted by the young men and young 
women of this country, is not a doubtful luxury, but 
an immoral pastime. And he who runs the livery 
stable open to promiscuous hire on God's holy day, 
not only violates God's holy law in doing unnecessary 
work on the Sabbath, but he absolutely contributes 
to the damnation of the children of this country." 
An old member of the Methodist church, who owned 
a large livery stable, was present. He walked down 
to his stable and said to his hands, "Boys, hereafter 
we will do no business on God's holy day. You can 
go home and go to church with your families." And 
he closed his livery stable, and that livery stable, to 
my personal knowledge, has been closed tight and 
fast on Sunday for ten years. A short time ago I 
met the gentleman, and I said to him, "How is your 
business?" And he said, "George, thank God, I 



195 

have shown the world that a man can run even a 
livery stable according to God's law." My dear 
brother, whenever yon make up your mind to be a 
Christian man, made out of the right kind of stuff, 
you will put your foot down and say, "Whatever can- 
not be run according to God's law will not be run 
by me." Oh, for a nation of people that cannot be 
sold on the marts of the world like hogs ! Oh, for 
a manhood that will stand for the right because it is 
right ! A man who cannot be bribed. Oh, for a 
man like Daniel, who can stand and look the world, 
the flesh and the devil in the face, and say, "No." 
"I will not violate my religion, I will not disgrace 
my father and mother, I will not offend my God." 
"I will not defile myself even with the king's meat 
or the king's drink." It matters not if Jerusalem 
lies in ruins among her Judean hills, while I am 
surrounded by the pageantry of Babylon, it matters 
not if this gate opens into political honors of the king, 
it matters not if in this I am following the customs 
of the great, it matters not if in this I am going with 
the throng and not seem odd, it matters not if in 
this I shall get the wealth of the world; still my 
foot goes down, and I say it so Heaven and earth 
and hell can hear it, "No, I will not defile myself." 



196 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

My character is above a king, my character is above 
the customs of a palace, my character is above the 
purples of political honor, my character is more than 
the company of the throng about me, my character 
means more than gold, I will not defile myself. 
Thank God for the man. I go back a long ways 
in history to get him, but it is worth a journey to 
ancient Babylon to find a man like this. I never 
read of this wonderful character that I do not, deep 
in my heart, long to be a man. But Daniel does 
not eat the meat nor drink the wine. What be- 
comes of the act? In all ages of the world God has 
taken care of the man who has taken care of God's 
law. God has stood by the man that has stood by 
his word. God has never forsaken the man who 
never forsook his God. Daniel, though apparently 
turning his back on everything, turned his back on 
nothing. Though willing to surrender everything 
for his religion, surrendered nothing. God has 
never asked any man to give up anything of perma- 
nent merit to become a Christian. Daniel was se- 
lected by the king, and through four dynasties he 
was the first man — the honored man. He was 
honored in the heathen government, honored in the 
heathen palace, honored in the heathen state; hon- 



197 

ored of God and honored of man, but envied by 
the weak. And those who envied him watched him 
day in and day ont to find a flaw in his great char- 
acter, but no flaws could be found. At last they 
said, we shall have to accuse him on account of his 
religion, and their nefarious scheme was plotted. 
They go to the haughty king and ask him to sign a 
document which forbade that any man pray to any 
God, save to the king, for thirty days, under the 
penalty of being cast into the cavern of the wild 
lions. Now, when Daniel knew that the writing 
was signed, he went into his house, and his windows 
being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he 
kneeled upon his knees three times a day and prayed, 
and gave thanks to God as he did aforetime. "What 
a wonderful moment in this man's life, when he 
reads his own doom in the law of the king, and then 
walks deliberately to the open window, which he 
knows is guarded by his enemies. He kneels down 
and prays as calmly as if there were no lions' den or 
king's law, nor guarding enemy. Daniel is reported 
to the king, and the king is sorrowful, for he honored 
this noble young man, but according to the law 
which could not be changed, Daniel was taken to 
the cave, not cowering, not downcast, but he walked 



198 SEBMONS BY GEO. E. STUABT. 

toward the lions' den like a man. They had put 
many a skulking, cowardly criminal into the lions' 
den, but this was the first man they had ever led 
thither. When they had thrown him into the 
cavern they listened to hear the lions tear him, but 
they heard not a noise. The great God had gone 
before, and with an omnipotent hand, that had made 
the lions' frame, he stroked their heads and ordered 
them to lie down in peace and wait the coming of 
His servant. "When the hour for evening prayer 
came, Daniel, as he walked in darkness in the cav- 
ern, no doubt studied for a moment, reckoned direc- 
tions and made up his mind which way Jerusalem 
stood, kneeled down with his face toward Jerusalem 
and prayed to his God as aforetime. What a pic- 
ture to the doubting old world to see Daniel, before 
the king's decree, in the face of the lions' den, 
kneeling before the open window toward Jerusalem ! 
What a picture to see this man in the dark cavern, 
surrounded by fierce lions, but in the pavilion of 
the great eternal God, kneeling in the darkness with 
his face toward the ruined walls of Jerusalem ! At 
the hour for retirement, perhaps Daniel pillowed his 
head on the shaggy mane of the lion over whose 
mouth rested the hand of his God and slept sweetly 



199 

through the night. Before the dawn of the morn- 
ing the king was early at the cave, half suspecting 
that God would be with such a man, and down into 
the mouth of the cave he cried, "Oh, Daniel, is that 
God whom thou servest continually, able to deliver 
thee?" And Daniel answered, "Oh, King, live for- 
ever. He is able." Thank God, He is able. No 
fiery furnace can burn where God says, "Thou shalt 
not burn." K~o hungry lions can devour where God 
says, a Thou shalt not devour." When God says, "I 
will be with thee," that means that He will be with 
us, for us, whatever our actions demand of Him. 
Brother, do not fear to throw your life on the great 
arm of God; to throw your business and your all on 
the great arm of God, and fear not the world, fear 
not man, fear not the devil, only fear God and do 
right. 




" THE PHASES OF A GREAT MAN'S LIFE." 

Matthew xxvi : 58. "But Peter followed Him afar unto 
the high priest's palace, and went in and sat with the 
servants, to see the end." 



I have read you a text that has been used from 
time immemorial as a whip to scourge backsliders. 
A text introducing the scene bringing out the weak 
place in a single day's experience of a great man's 
life. It is true that straws tell which way the wind 
blows; one act is often an index to the life, but as 
a rule it is unfair to pick out the darkest day and 
the darkest hour of any man's life as an index to 
his character. If I were to confine myself closely 
to my text, and preach from it as men ordinarily 
preach from texts of Scripture, I might divide it as 
follows. First, the fact that Peter followed his 
Lord; second, the way in which he followed Him — 
"afar off;" third, the purpose for which he followed 
Him — "to see the end." But I purpose in this hour 
to take a broader view of this great character than 
a single verse can give, to take a fairer view than a 
single day's transactions will give. The Bible is a 
faithful biography, it does not give a tombstone ac- 

200 



count of any character. It brings out the dark and 
the bright, the good and the bad, it gives us the man. 
No character in the book has interested me more 
than the character of St. Peter. I read the whole 
New Testament through in search of all the facts 
concerning this man, who at one moment said unto 
his Lord, "Though all men shall be offended because 
of Thee, jet will I never be offended; though I 
should die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee," 
and at another began he to curse and to swear, say- 
ing, "I know not the man;" who at one moment 
said, "Lord, I am ready to go with Thee both unto 
prison and unto death," and at another "followed 
Him afar off;" who at one moment, with sword in 
hand, met "a great multitude with sword and staves, 
from the chief priests and elders of the people, and 
struck a servant of the high priest's and smote off his 
ear," and at another cowered before the maid who 
saw him and said unto them that were there, "This 
fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth." 

Who at one moment, "arraigned before the rulers 
and elders and scribes, and Annas, the high priest, 
and Caiphas, and John and Alexander, and as many 
as were of the kindred of the high priest," in the 
great city of Jerusalem and commanded "not to 



202 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus," an- 
swered and said unto them, "Whether it be right in 
the sight of God to hearken unto you more than to 
hearken unto God judge ye, for we cannot but speak 
the things which we have seen and heard." And at 
another moment, when they said, "Thou also art one 
of them, for thy speech betrayeth thee," he began 
to curse and to swear, saying, "I know not the man." 
Who at one moment, standing before the multitude 
on the day of Pentecost preached a sermon, that 
"when they heard this they were pricked in their 
hearts, and said unto Peter and the rest of the 
apostles, 'Men and brethren, what shall we do V " and 
the same day there were added unto them 3,000 
souls. At another, standing alone in the darkness 
weeping bitterly over his cowardice. At one mo- 
ment a great preacher, leading 3,000 souls to Christ 
in one hour, and at another a simple Galilean fisher- 
man, dragging his net through the blue waters. 

Who is this queer man? What is he? As I go 
back over my own life I can find a day here and 
there when I performed deeds that I would be 
ashamed to recite before this audience. I can find 
in there days in which I have performed deeds which, 
to recite them, would bring upon me the accusation 



of boasting. I have dark hours in my life, I have 
rough places in my life. Who has not? Don't pick 
out the darkest day of my life, my brother, and call 
that George Stuart. Don't pick out the meanest, 
weakest thing I ever did, and make that the key to 
my life work. Take me from the cradle to the grave, 
that is my life. Take me in my sins, take me at 
the altar, take me in the shout of salvation, take me 
in my weakest moment, take me in my strongest, 
take me in my worst deed, take me in my best, take 
my life. Our lives are made up of epochs. 

David, overcoming the champion of the camp of 
the Philistines, and being overcome by the beauti- 
ful Bathsheba, presents a painful contrast of strength 
and weakness. Yet there are few lives in which 
there are not these contrasts. Let us to-day take an 
impartial, honest view of this great man. There are 
two great preachers of the early church who seem 
to rise like mountain peaks above all others. These 
two are Peter and Paul. In the Acts of the Apostles 
they seem to be taken as great examples to illustrate 
to the world the work of the Apostles. St. Peter, a 
fisherman; St. Paul, a learned doctor; St. Peter, 
called by His Master from earth, and St. Paul, 
called by his Lord from Heaven. St. Peter, who 



204 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

denied his Lord, and St. Paul who persecuted Him; 
St. Peter, the central figure of the first twelve chap- 
ters of the Acts of the Apostles, and St. Paul, the 
central figure of the last sixteen; St. Peter, the man 
of great heart, great impulse and great energy, and 
St. Paul, the man of a great head and wonderful 
equanimity. How I love to study these two great 
characters, through both of whom the Holy Spirit 
wrought such wonderful things. But I ask you to- 
day to come with me in the study of the character 
of St. Peter. There were three distinct epochs in 
his life. Peter, the Galilean fisherman, before he 
met his Lord; Peter, the disciple of Jesus, from the 
day he forsook his net on Galilee until he received 
the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, and Peter from Pente- 
cost until his death. 

As a Galilean fisherman his very occupation was 
conducive of purity, innocence and gentleness. It 
was the life from which St. John, the gentle, sweet- 
spirited disciple came, and Peter was his genial com- 
panion. As they watched the waters of the Galilean 
sea play through the meshes of their net, as they lay 
upon the bank or sat in their Galilean homes, there 
was little to corrupt or vitiate them. They came 
from an innocent life. The cursing and swearing 



referred to in the language of Peter was not the 
reckless, careless profanity that falls from the lips of 
our modern blasphemers, but it was emphasis given 
to his affirmation in the form of an oath, with the 
penalty of a curse. It was a great day when "An- 
drew, Simon Peter's brother, first flndeth his own 
brother Simon, and saith unto him, 'We have found 
the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. 
And he brought Him to Jesus. 7 " It was a great 
day when St. Peter first looked upon his Lord. It 
was a great day when Jesus first looked upon Simon 
Peter. It was not a casual look that his Master gave 
him, but a look in which the eyes of his Lord went 
through and through him, searching every avenue of 
his heart, every element of his character. It was not 
an accidental sentence that fell from his Master's 
lips when first He looked upon this great man. He 
said, "Thou art Simon, son of Jonah; thou shalt be 
called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone." 
Christ looked at the great character before Him and 
saw that there was rock in him. It was the Master's 
decision of his character. Though Peter returned to 
his fishing boat, he did not forget the one whom he 
had met. It was a glad day when his eyes rested 
upon his Lord approaching the shore where they were 



206 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

mending their nets. It was not an accidental jour- 
ney that Christ made. His steps toward the boat of 
Peter were not accidental steps. The fact that He 
stepped into Peter's boat, when the boat of the other 
was lying nearby, was not accident. He said unto 
Peter, "Kow out a little ways," that He might be 
separated from the great throng. While he stood in 
Peter's boat and talked to the great throng there was 
not a more earnest listener in all of that number 
than the man who sat at his feet. His sermon com- 
pleted, as if to pay for the use of his pulpit and 
teach a great lesson simultaneously, He said unto 
Simon, "Launch out into the deep and let down your 
nets for a draft." And Simon answered, and said 
unto Him, "Master, we have toiled all the night and 
taken nothing. Nevertheless, at Thy word, I will 
let down the net." It seems that Jesus took hold 
of the net to help them, for the next verse reads, 
"And when they had thus done they inclosed a great 
multitude of fishes, and their net broke, and they be- 
gan calling to their partners, who were in the other 
ship, to come and help them. And they came, and 
filled both ships so that they began to sink." Though 
the fishermen had toiled all night and had caught 
nothing, Peter was so impressed by the wonderful 



words of the man that stood in his boat and talked 
to the people, that he was willing to hang his net on 
the words of his Master and let it down. As the 
great pile of fishes floundered upon the shore, to the 
astonishment of all, Christ looked upon them and 
then looked upon Simon. Jesus said unto him, 
"Simon, fear not, from henceforth thou shalt catch 
men." Think you that this was merely a curious 
freak of our Lord? Think you that this was only to 
make a display of His wonderful power? Ah, my 
brother, I see in this a wonderful prophesy, I see 
in this as one of the miracles a wonderful lesson. 
Simon, as you have hung the business of your life 
upon My word, and had this wonderful success, that 
has astonished you all, now hang your life on Me, 
and I will give you the success in catching men that 
you have witnessed in your secular profession this 
day. Look at this little picture and then look at St. 
Peter hanging upon the words of his Lord, "tarry 
ye at Jerusalem." Look at him as he stands in 
Jerusalem, pulling the Gospel net with 3,000 souls. 
Think you not that this was but a prophesy of our 
Lord of his coming success? I believe that, as 
Christ saw the rock in his character and called him 
Cephas, so Christ saw the success in his life, which 



208 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

He pictured in this wonderful draft of fishes. "And 
when they had brought their ships to land, they for- 
sook all and followed Him." "We now look upon 
this man no longer as a Galilean fisherman, but as 
a disciple following his Lord. He was a born leader. 
Some one has said that he who is content to go be- 
hind, God never made to go before. If a dozen men 
start out from this city on any expedition whatever, 
without organization, twenty-four hours would not 
elapse until some man would be in the lead. It 
would be the born leader. Peter was the spokesman. 
As you read the Gospels through you will be struck 
with this fact that when Christ put a question to the 
disciples the record is, "and Peter answered," "and 
Peter answered," "and Peter answered." When 
Christ put the general question to the disciples, 
"Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" 
they said, "Some say that thou art John the Bap- 
tist, and some Elias, and some Jeremiah or one of 
the prophets," but when He put the test question to 
them, "Whom say ye that I am?" and "Simon Peter 
answered and said, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
the Living God.' " 

The people regarded him as the leader, and "when 
they were come to Capernaum they that received 



209 

tribute money came to Peter, and said, 'Doth not 
your Master pay tribute V " 

The disciples regarded him as the leader. After 
the resurrection in the dark hour Peter's mind turned 
back to the net, to the boat, and Peter saith unto 
them, "I go a fishing." And they say unto him, 
"We also go with thee." When Peter turned every 
man with him followed. He was an honest doubter 
seeking the truth. I have a sympathy with an hon- 
est doubter if he is seeking the truth, but a superficial 
egotist who has read a few volumes of infidel litera- 
ture, a few novels and a little poetry here and there, 
and a few scattering chapters of Scripture, and 
with a self-complacent air turns his back upon the 
preacher, upon the Bible, upon religious literature 
and calls himself an infidel is, of all characters, most 
contemptible to me. 

The doubt in the mind of an honest man is a pick 
in the hand of an honest geologist. He will dig for 
truth, and God will hear the sound of his pick and 
come to him sooner or later. 

Paul was such a character, and God spake to him 
from the heavens. The eunuch was such a charac- 
ter, and when his earnestness arose to such a height 

as that he read along the highway, God called Philip 
14 



210 SEEMONS BY GEO. R. STtJAET. 

out of a great revival and sent him to his chariot to 
give him instruction. Cornelius was such a man, and 
God sent an angel to tell him where he could find a 
man to give him instruction. An honest doubter 
seeking for truth, such a character was Simon the 
fisherman. When Christ was walking on the sea 
and His astonished disciples stood and gazed at Him, 
they were all troubled and cried out for fear. Jesus 
said, "It is I, be not afraid. " They were all silent, 
but Peter answered Him, and said, "Lord, if it be 
Thee, bid me come to Thee on the water." How 
natural that Peter should be the one to test the 
matter; it was his nature to test. And He said, 
"Come." And when Peter saw the wind boisterous 
he was afraid and began to sink, and he cried, say- 
ing, "Lord, save me." And immediately Jesus 
stretched forth his hand and caught him, and said 
unto him, "Oh, thou of little faith, wherefore didst 
thou doubt?" It seems that Christ Himself, at 
times, become a little impatient with his doubts, but 
the earnestness of the man won the Master's sym- 
pathy. Christ rarely answered questions of simple 
curiosity. He usually turned them off by some other 
question or by some reproof, but He never turned 
Peter away. What a help it would have been to 



THE PHASES OF A GREAT MAn's LIFE. 211 

Peter's faith to have walked upon the water, what 
a test of the Master's divinity. But as He went out 
of the temple one of His disciples said unto Him, 
"See, what manner of stones, what buildings are 
these?" and Jesus answered and said unto him, 
"Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not 
be left one stone upon another that shall not be 
thrown down." And as He sat upon the Mount of 
Olives, over against the temple, Peter, James, John 
and Andrew asked Him privately (Peter, no doubt, 
the spokesman), "Tell us when these things shall be, 
and what shall be the sign when all these things shall 
be fulfilled ?" Peter, what do you want to know for? 
It is the nature of the man. If he had a definite 
sign of the fulfillment and then the fulfillment, he 
could have something for his faith to rest upon. He 
is seeking for evidence, he is willing to make an hon- 
est test. When Christ said, "Let down the net," 
though he had toiled all the night and caught noth- 
ing, though the noise upon the shore and the time 
of day might be unfavorable to fishing, still he was 
willing to make the test. "At Thy word, Lord, I 
let down the net." In my text, when all the other 
disciples had scattered and fled, Peter followed "to 
see the end." He was not satisfied, he was never satis- 



212 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

fied until he had gone to the bottom of everything. 
Another tried to follow close to the Master, and the 
servants of the high priest turned and stripped the 
robes from him and he ran away naked. Peter fol- 
lowed at a distance, the only way he could have fol- 
lowed. I used to think from the abuse heaped upon 
him for following at a distance that all the other 
disciples walked close to their Master, speaking sym- 
pathizing words as He journeyed, but the truth is 
that Peter was the only one that dared follow Him 
at all, unless that other disciple were John, and 
there is strong evidence that it was a layman, and 
not one of the twelve. If this be true, Peter was 
the only one that dared to follow his Lord. Though 
the disciples followed Peter when he went fishing, 
they do not follow him when he walks into the jaws 
of death. 

Peter was determined to see the end. When it 
was announced that Jesus had arisen from the dead 
Peter and John ran to the sepulcher. John possibly, 
being the younger, out-ran Peter, and came first to 
the sepulcher, and seeing the stone rolled away, was 
satisfied and stopped, but Peter did not stop until his 
eye searched the sepulcher from one end to the other 
and saw the napkins folded. He was a man not to 



stop until he went to the bottom. Not only an hon- 
est doubter, but he was an earnest man, an impul- 
sive man. On the Mount of Transfiguration, when 
he "was transfigured before them, his face did shine 
as the sun, his raiment was white as the light, and 
behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias 
talking unto them." He then answered, and said 
unto Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here. If 
Thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one 
for Thee, one for Moses and one for Elias." This 
was a great hour for St. Peter. When Moses, the 
great representative of the dispensation of the law; 
Elias, the representative of the prophetic dispensa- 
tion, and Jesus, the representative of the new dis- 
pensation, stood together Peter's faith began to glow, 
his earnest heart wanted to linger there. Have you 
never been at a place, some great meeting, for in- 
stance, where the Gospel was greatly honored and 
where wonderful power was manifested, and your 
faith seemed stronger than at any other period of 
your life? Did you never desire to linger longer? 
One of the great tests of the presence of God in a 
congregation is the disposition on the part of the peo- 
ple to linger after the services. Faith is strong, hope 
is bright, God is near, and we are loath to leave the 



214 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

sacred place. Peter's character is beautifully illus- 
trated in the little scene where Jesus began to wash 
His disciples' feet. "Then cometh He to Simon Peter. 
And Peter saith unto Him, 'Lord, dost thou wash my 
feet? Thou shalt never wash my feet.' And Jesus 
answered him, and said, If I wash thee not, thou 
hast no part with Me.' " St. Peter said unto Him, 
"Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my 
head." When Christ came to wash Peter's feet his 
manliness declined, but when informed, "If I wash 
thee not, thou hast no part with Me," he was will- 
ing to be washed all over by the Master, if it but 
gave him a part with Him. How impulsive and 
gushing are the words, "Not my feet only, but my 
hands and my head." Christ recognized the fact 
that He had in St. Peter an earnest doubter, but a 
faithful searcher for the truth, and He had him 
present at all the miracles which He wrought. Christ 
seemed anxious to establish him in the faith. As 
they were going to Jerusalem, and Christ passed the 
barren fig tree, He cursed it. "And in the morning 
as they passed by they saw the fig tree dried up 
from the roots." And Peter, calling to remem- 
brance, said unto Him, "Master, behold, the fig tree 
which Thou cursed is withered away." Did you 



THE PHASES OF A GREAT MAn's LIFE. 215 

ever notice the answer? To me it seems pathetic. 
Christ had watched this earnest man seeking for 
truth, and in answer to this inquiry of Peter's He 
simply said, "Have faith in God." 

One among the last conversations the Master had 
with Peter He said a thing that has always interested 
me. "And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, satan hath 
desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat. 
But I have prayed that thy faith fail thee not, and 
when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." 
Christ seemed to be relying upon Peter. He seemed 
to look to him as the one who, when thoroughly 
rooted and grounded in the faith, will be a great help 
and stay to the others. "Satan hath desired to sift 
thee as wheat." When the wheat is sifted, nothing 
but the chaff remains, but when the wheat is win- 
nowed the chaff is blown away and nothing but the 
wheat remains. Christ's leaning upon this great 
Apostle and praying for him is, to me, a fact of great 
significance. Christ regarded him as a man of such 
strength of character as that, when thoroughly set- 
tled, he should be a great tower of strength to his 
brethren, and so he proved. When Peter was in 
prison the church was in distress. The good women 
gathered and spent the hours in prayer. We have 



216 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

thus looked at his character from many standpoints, 
and I now come to the most interesting phase of his 
life, that from the day of Pentecost to his death. 

A life never rises higher than its faith. St. 
Peter's life vacillated between donbt and faith. 
After he had seen his Master walk upon the water 
and all that were in the ship cried ont, "Thou art 
the son of God;" when at Caesarea Phillip! Peter 
answered, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Liv- 
ing God;" when at the transfiguration he saw the 
glory of God it seemed that at each of these points 
his faith was settled; but when he followed to the 
palace "to see the end" and saw his Master insulted 
and buffeted, saw Him apparently powerless in the 
hands of the enemy, saw Him apparently shorn of 
all His strength, when challenged to prove Himself 
God he was silent, when asked even to prophesy who 
smote Him he seemed unable to do so, Peter's faith 
failed him, and he gives us the darkest scene in his 
whole life, in his denial of his Lord. But when his 
Master looked at him on his third denial, just as the 
cock crew, the glance of his Master shot an arrow 
into his heart, he turned and walked into the dark- 
ness; whether he prostrated himself upon the earth 
or whether he stood, I do not know, but he wept bit- 



terly. How bitterly he wept, none but God and lie 
knew. It is difficult to determine wbat was the state 
of this great man's mind, as it struggled with the 
words of the Master, with the miracles, with the 
mock robe, with the crown of thorns and His death 
upon Calvary. When he struggled with the false re- 
ports of Roman soldiers and empty seculcher, when 
we remember that he was but a man, it is difficult 
to tell what states of mind he possessed. The record 
tells that in the darkness he turns back to his net, 
to his boat and to the sea. As they toiled all night 
and at each lifting of the net there appeared noth- 
ing, no one can tell how oft his mind went back to 
his Master and to His words. ~No one can tell how 
oft he thought of the miraculous draft of fishes when 
his Master was in the boat, and when he hung his 
net upon his Master's words. As they were closing 
up a long, sad, fruitless night of labor and a form on 
the shore in the gray of the morning asked the ques- 
tion, "Children, have you any meat?" who can tell 
what thoughts were awakened in the minds of those 
tired fishermen? The promtpness with which they 
cast their nets upon the right side of the vessel at 
His command shows that there was a gleam of light 
in His appearance on the shore, which was further 



218 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

proved by the fact that so quickly "that disciple 
whom Jesus loved said unto Peter, 'It is the Lord.' " 
Who can tell the feelings of Peter when he heard 
it was the Lord and girt his fisher's coat unto him and 
cast himself into the sea, who can describe his feel- 
ings when he looked upon his risen Lord standing 
upon the shore of Galilee, who can tell how quickly 
he ran through miracle and speech and event, 
through the crucifixion and burial up to that hour, 
and what a wonderful grip his faith took on the 
Gospel when he looked through all these things at 
his risen Lord? If I were a painter I would paint 
the grouping of these pictures upon the shores of 
the sea. It is a group of all the great events in St. 
Peter's life. When Peter stood upon the shore with 
his Master, Christ addressed him, "Simon, son of 
Jonas, lovest thou Me?" More than these, did you 
note that He said unto him, "Simon, son of Jonas;" 
that was the first thing the Master ever said unto 
him, that was the first name the Master ever called 
him. How that carried him back to the moment 
when he first met his Lord. The fishes floundering 
upon the shore carried him back to the second time 
he ever met his Lord. When looking upon the 
floundering fishes his Master had said, "Follow Me." 



It carried him back to the hour when hanging his 
net on his Master's words he had caught his first 
miraculous draft of fishes. Jesus had said, "Go into 
Galilee and wait until I come." He did not say 
go back to your fishing, He did not say go back to 
your occupation, He said "Wait." If they were out 
of meat and hunger forced them to the fish-net, if 
they had hungered twelve hours more hanging on 
the words of their Master, He would have come to 
them, bringing meat. If you notice, "As soon as 
they were come to land they saw the fire of coals 
there, fish laid thereon, and bread." Jesus saith, 
"Bring of the fish which ye have now caught." How 
oft we give up just in the hour of triumph, how oft 
we fail just at the moment of the supreme test. 
The bread question has driven many a servant of God 
to secularity, the bread and meat question has driven 
many a servant of God to the boat and to the net. 
In the first miraculous draft of fishes Christ said, 
"Hang your life on My word." They forsook all 
and followed Him, but in the dark moment they 
went back to the net and to the boat. How the 
floundering fishes carried Peter back to the moment 
when he proposed to hang all on the word of Christ. 
Jesus said unto them, "Come and dine." When was 



220 SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 

the last time Peter sat with his Master? Was it not 
in the hour when he said unto him, "Though all men 
be offended, yet will I never be offended?" How 
that little meal carried him back to the hour when 
he made his strong profession which he had so poorly 
carried out. As the fire burned upon the shore and 
they stood around it, how that little picture carried 
him back to the last time when he stood by the fire 
in the presence of his Master and denied him, say- 
ing, "I know not the man." How the crowing of 
the chickens from the hillside houses by the sea car- 
ried him back to the time he heard the chicken crow 
in the presence of his Master. Well may he say as 
he looks upon each of these pictures, bringing up 
every great event in his past life, "Lord, Thou 
knowest all things." There was one thing that this 
earnest, honest man knew, and he was confident that 
his Master had the same knowledge, and that was, "I 
love Thee." Looking over his whole past life, which 
the Saviour had brought in panoramic view before 
him, the name he gave, the floundering fishes, the 
supper, the fire and the crowing of the cock, brought 
vividly before him every dark picture of his life. 
Looking back over it, he said, in substance, "Lord, 
you know all." The pictures before us bring out 



every slip I have made, but I fall back amid all 
my stumbling on one proposition, "I love Thee." 
Here the divinity of Jesus Christ was settled. 
After being settled, it settled everything else. 
Christ said, "Tarry ye at Jerusalem until ye be 
endued with power from on high." St. Peter took 
that command and lingered. Perhaps, after they 
had waited in Jerusalem three days and nights 
and the power had not come, the devil said unto 
Peter, "Your Lord has gone and the power cometh 
not, you had better return to the net," but Peter 
waited. "When the seventh day came, possibly, the 
devil said, "You have waited a whole week and 
the power cometh not." When the ninth day came, 
perhaps the devil made his hardest fight in the very 
crisis, but Peter waited. The power came and he 
preached a sermon that led three thousand souls to 
Christ. Never before has Peter absolutely surren- 
dered the world, never before had he made up his 
mind to hang on the words of the Lord Jesus, though 
he should starve. 

It is this absolute, unconditional consecration fight 
to the supreme test that qualifies any man for the 
baptism of the Holy Spirit. As Peter stands preach- 
ing that wonderful sermon if one had said, "Are you 



222 



SERMONS BY GEO. R. STUART. 



not the man who denied his Lord in the palace?" he 
could have answered, "I have wept bitterly, surren- 
dered and prayed ten days since that." In this great 
Apostle we have a wonderful example of how the 
disciple of Jesus Christ is endued with power. 
Brother, have you ever had the supreme test? Have 
you seen the bottom of the flour barrel? Have you 
seen the last piece of meat on the griddle? Have 
you stood the supreme test of giving up this old 
world and hanging your life upon the words of the 
Lord Jesus Christ? Have you, after this complete 
surrender, laid all upon the altar and waited for the 
fire to come? Have you had the glorious experience 
that follows such a surrender and such a waiting in 
the upper chamber? 




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